is what gives the remaining 10% a bad name!

Hi,

Greg_Lance-Watkins‏@Greg_LW

Greg_Lance-Watkins added,

From the #Mail could it be that #Banks‘ connection could be via #Katya? Then of course the creep #Batten not only had involvement with #Wifen & the #Russian#paedophile#sex_offender#Vladimir_Bukovski closes the citcle for #Farage & #Ukip perhaps!

Greg_Lance-Watkins added,
Greg_Lance-Watkins Retweeted Roblola

Roblola@Rob_Bulll

Replying to @SLATUKIP

And also why this film maker and ex ukip official with close ties to current leader keeps popping up with someone who was convicted of shenanigans with Russia during Trump’s election. @Greg_LW

MI5 probe links between Russian spy at centre of American espionage ring and mysterious Zimbabwean businessman

By Daniel Boffey
Updated: 11:07, 4 July 2010

Links between the alleged spy Anna Chapman and a controversial Zimbabwean businessman are being investigated by MI5.

The Russian redhead at the centre of the American espionage probe worked with multi-millionaire Ken Sharpe for three years at a British registered company based in the London flat she shared with her then husband, Alex.

Mr Chapman revealed yesterday that an MI5 agent who called herself ‘Clare’ spent much of a five-hour interrogation last week asking him about his ex-wife’s relationship with Russian-speaking Mr Sharpe.

Accused: The semi-naked picture of Anna Chapman taken by her ex-husband Alex on their honeymoon in Zimbabwe in 2002

During her time with the company, Southern Union, 28-year-old Ms Chapman moved millions of pounds between Zimbabwe and the UK, raising questions over whether the cash may have been laundered for the purposes of espionage.

The MI5 agent also quizzed Mr Chapman, 30, about Mr Sharpe’s close relationship with Ms Chapman’s father, Vasily Kushchenko, a high-ranking Russian diplomat who was accused last week of involvement with his country’s secret services, formerly known as the KGB.

According to Mr Chapman, it was Mr Kushchenko who first introduced his ex-wife to Mr Sharpe, 38, whose businesses include property development and a plant exporting vodka bottles to Russia.

Mr Sharpe is a fluent Russian speaker who lives in his native Zimbabwe with Russian wife Joanna, a former bellydancer.

Mr Chapman claims that his wife and Mr Sharpe, who is understood to be linked to tyrant Robert Mugabe’s regime, set up Southern Union, which has charitable status, to enable Zimbabwean expats to send money home at competitive exchange rates.

According to Mr Chapman, the money was deposited in an HSBC account in London then distributed through a maze of international bank accounts and front companies, to avoid scrutiny by Zimbabwean authorities, before being distributed by Mr Sharpe.

Interrogation: Alex Chapman, Anna’s ex-husband

Mr Chapman was made a director of the company but was asked to leave just one month after he split from his wife in 2005.

He said his interview with the MI5 agent on Monday had covered his ‘life with Anna’ but that the conversation had repeatedly returned to her father and, in particular, Mr Sharpe.

He said: ‘I had just put the phone down on my father, who had told me the news about Anna, when I received a call.

‘A woman said, “This is Clare from the security services. You are probably aware by now that your ex-wife is being accused of espionage.” I said I had just been told about it.

‘She said she was coming to see me and that she wanted a detailed report about Anna and her father. She wanted to know the workings of Southern Union and all about Ken Sharpe.

‘She asked if there were any strangely large amounts of money going through the company. She wanted to know where Ken was from and what he did.’

Mr Chapman added: ‘I told the agent that the only thing I found weird about Anna’s father was that he could split himself into two different people. In one moment he was business, business and next moment he was saying, “Let’s go fishing.” ’

During the interview, which took place in a conference room at the Milford Hall Hotel in Salisbury, Wiltshire, the agent suggested that his former wife may have been persuaded by her father to work in espionage.

Mr Chapman, a former public schoolboy from Bournemouth, said: ‘Clare asked whether Anna being held by the FBI and charged with spying came as a shock to me, and I said, “Yes.”

‘Then she said that in their view Anna’s father was a rather shady character. She gave me the impression that she believed Anna had got caught up in something but didn’t really understand how serious it was.

‘She said she would have been lured by the glamour and the glitz and that she thought she was doing her country a service.’

Mr Chapman claimed he spoke on the phone on Friday to his ex-wife in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, where she is held.

He said that he got through to her Russian mobile phone just hours after she was denied bail on charges of conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. The crime carries a potential penalty of five years in prison.

He said: ‘I rang her because I was extremely worried about her. She answered and I immediately recognised her voice although she sounded utterly drained. She initially claimed she was her sister, Katya.

‘She just said, “So much has happened. I am not surprised about everything that is happening in England. It is happening everywhere. But I would prefer you not to speak to people about me for a couple of weeks.”

‘I said that I was sorry about her father’s name being linked to the KGB and she kept on saying, “Don’t worry, don’t worry.” ’

Ms Chapman’s lawyer Robert Baum yesterday told a bail hearing she was ‘very frightened’ by jail and had been embarrassed by details of her private life emerging in recent days, including stories of her love of the high life.

But Mr Baum told the court: ‘The truth is she is probably no different from your typical single 28-year-old woman in New York City. She runs a successful business, goes out at night. She dates men, enjoys a social life.’

However, concerns have been raised within the British secret service that Ms Chapman may have been involved in espionage during her five-year stay in the UK, in which time she became a British citizen.

Young love: Alex and Anna Chapman at their family home near Fordingbridge in 2002

MI5’s investigation appears to be focusing on the network of contacts around her father and Mr Sharpe.

Mr Sharpe, who is said to have been expelled as child from his country’s top private school Peterhouse, is understood to be linked to Mr Mugabe and his Zanu PF party.

Mr Chapman met his ex-wife, born Anna Kushchenko, at a rave in London in 2001 when she was on a break from studying for an economics degree at Moscow University.

She was wearing ‘a stunning white dress and pair of red high heels’, he said, and that night he stole her away from her travelling partner and boyfriend. Within eight months they had married at a register office in Moscow.

They honeymooned in Zimbabwe in March 2002 – and Mr Chapman took a picture of his new wife lying half-naked on their hotel bed.

He said: ‘We were just having a bit of fun. We were in love.’ But he admits that early in their relationship there were signs that there was much more to Anna and her father.

He recalled: ‘We were going to a nightclub in Moscow, but the doormen were not letting us in. All of a sudden a guy got out of a Diablo [Lamborghini] car, had a word with the people on the door and we were just whisked through.

‘They almost bowed to us – it was incredible. Apparently this guy was some Persian Prince. I didn’t understand how well connected she seemed to be.’

After six months in Moscow, the couple returned to London where they worked for Southern Union from their flat in Stoke Newington.

Mr Chapman said: ‘Mr Sharpe would call us all the time. He would say you need to move this amount of money from this bank account to that bank account.’

But as Ms Chapman sought the material comfort that her husband could not provide, their relationship became strained and they split up in 2005.

A month later, Mr Sharpe told Mr Chapman that Southern Union was closing. Following her time at Southern Union, Ms Chapman worked for private jet lease company Netjets, hedge fund Navigator Assets and as a business manager at the Uxbridge and Ealing Broadway branches of Barclays bank.

Mr Chapman said: ‘When Anna left Southern Union she became very business orientated. She wanted to move to Mayfair and go to posh clubs. When she wanted something, she went and got it.’

Ms Chapman moved to America in 2008 to set up an internet property company. Mr Chapman said: ‘That was the most surprising thing, this sudden move to America and getting her green card so quickly.

‘She said the UK was far too relaxed, in as much as that politicians say things and it never gets done.

‘In Russia, they say things and it gets done. But she liked everything about the English culture – Benny Hill, James Bond and Harry Potter. She would send Benny Hill on to her father in Zimbabwe. He roared with laughter at it.’

Yesterday Mr Sharpe said: ‘I have not heard from MI5. Southern Union in the UK was not my company.’

Southern Union is still registered as an active company at Companies House.

Its sole current director is Steven Sugden, who lives in Dublin. Mr Sugden has denied any involvement with the company and said he had been listed as a director without his knowledge.

Internet firm was propped up by $1m from Russian state

The internet company run by Anna Chapman, which the FBI is understood to be investigating as a smokescreen for her alleged spying, was propped up by a $1million cash injection from the Russian state.

Ms Chapman founded her international property venture following her divorce from Briton Alex Chapman in 2006.

She boasted that the business made her a millionairess and financed her lavish lifestyle in New York.

Accused: A recent picture of Anna Chapman in the US

Mr Chapman, who kept in touch with his ex-wife after their divorce, said last week he was puzzled about how she had kept the struggling company afloat.

He said: ‘She moved over there to set up her internet property firm and it always seemed to be in the red, but it took off suddenly in 2009 and she said she was employing 50 people.

‘I couldn’t understand how she could pay them. At some point someone had pumped a lot of money into it.’

However, in statements to Russian business journalists that have been obtained by The Mail on Sunday, she boasts she received a cash boost estimated to be $1million (about £657,000) from Russian backers supported by the Russian state.

Ms Chapman, who confided to her former husband that her father was a ‘high-ranking’ officer in the Russian security forces, had told journalists that she had launched the ambitious venture in Russia by pawning her jewellery.

Eight months later, she had used up her capital and, after being met with rejections from private investors, faced bankruptcy.

‘Everybody I asked for money said no. All of them did, laughing at me,’ she said.

Finally, in 2008, she received the injection of money with the help of Russia’s Department of Support for Small Business and Agency for Developing Innovative Business.

Her website domdot.ru can still be accessed on the internet.

She told Moscow-based journalists  that her investors were her ‘business angels’ – insisting the Kremlin wanted nothing in return for its generosity.

But US investigators are believed to be interested in whether her alleged paymasters could have used the business to provide an elaborate cover for her alleged spying.

A US intelligence source said last night: ‘If Anna indeed is a deepcover agent, it was a brilliant stroke.

‘Her role apparently was to infiltrate the US Establishment by posing as a fabulously rich, self-made woman with a wild streak –  kind of a honeytrap for the dotcom age.

‘If that is the case, it may be that the company served as a pipeline for Moscow Central to continue generating a cashflow to finance her lifestyle that couldn’t be traced.’

Guest at lavish party with Royal connection

Anna Chapman attended a lavish London party held by a Russian who is close to his country’s embassy and has links to Britain’s Royal Family.

Guests gathered on a ship moored in the Thames in 2007 to celebrate Victory Day, the Russian equivalent of VE Day.

Those invited included prominent City financiers, including representatives of Barclays bank where Anna worked.

Entrepreneur Eugene Kasevin, a leading figure in the Anglo-Russian community, organised the event which is held annually and has been attended by ambassadors, businessmen and Prince Michael of Kent.

Mr Kasevin, 40, said he recalled Ms Chapman as a quiet individual. ‘I remember her look, her hair. But that’s it,’ he said from his home in Moscow.

‘She faded into the background. She was very timid.’ Allegations that she was a spy struck him as ‘a little unlikely’.

However, another guest at the party, politician Paul Wiffen, who now works for UKIP, said: ‘She was working the room. She was the sort of girl you noticed.

‘She asked me who I was and what I did as if sniffing around for who I knew.’

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Regards,

Greg_L-W.