Boris Johnson ‘backed pole-dancing ex-model pal Jennifer Arcuri for £100k-a-year job’
BORIS Johnson backed his pole-dancing ex-model pal Jennifer Arcuri for a £100k-a-year job, sources claim.
Leaked emails show the now Prime Minister was listed as a reference in the US businesswoman’s application to be head of a tech quango.
The Sunday Times reports she went for the job at Teach City in 2012, weeks after Mr Johnson started bidding for City Hall to take control of the same quango.
The allegations adds to mounting questions Mr Johnson faces over his links with the businesswoman – due to appear on Good Morning Britain tomorrow.
He has already been accused of granting public funding to Ms Arcuri, whose flat he’s said to have visited “several times”.
She reportedly received £10,000 in business cash from an organisation Mr Johnson was responsible for as London Mayor in 2013.
And Ms Arcuri, who was in her 20s at the time, was also allegedly given special treatment to attend jet-set trade missions led by the future PM, according to a Sunday Times investigation.
Mr Johnson has now been referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), and must provide details of their relationship by Tuesday to a summons from the London Assembly.
If he fails to do so he could face a penalty.
Someone has gone to great lengths to put together a massive attack and I stand by the legitimacy of my business. I am in fact a legitimate businesswoman.
Jennifer Arcuri
According to emails seen by the Sunday Times Mr Johnson wrote a letter of recommendation for the role at Tech City.
And the then 27-year-old student later wrote: “I still have the letter of rec from Boris. Hahaha.
“To think that we asked him to write us a recommendation for the CEO of Tech City is just hysterical.”
Four pals of the 34-year-old have claimed she had told them she had a sexual relationship with Mr Johnson, 55, while he was married to Marina Wheeler.
In the time the pair were said to be close, she was reportedly given privileged access to three foreign trips in one year – despite her tech firm not meeting the eligibility criteria.
Initial decisions to turn her down for two of the trips were overturned after intervention by Johnson and his close team, it is claimed.
A leaked email seen by the Sunday Times allegedly shows Arcuri was given access to a New York trade mission after discussing it with the then-Mayor.
MOUNTING QUESTIONS
She said: “I had every right to be on those trips as a legitimate businesswoman and stand by everything that happened because these allegations are completely false.
“This is an orchestrated attack on me, absolutely.
“Someone has gone to great lengths to put together a massive attack and I stand by the legitimacy of my business.
“I am in fact a legitimate businesswoman.”
Sources also reportedly confirmed Johnson was a frequent visitor to Arcuri’s posh top-floor flat in Shoreditch, East London, between 2012 and 2015.
After the claims emerged, Ms Arcuri reportedly told pals that Boris only made trips to the posh pad – which had a dancing pole – for private “technology lessons”.
Her comments come after Mr Johnson’s repeated refusal to deny he had an affair with the American former model.
And The Prime Minister insisted there was “no impropriety” about taxpayer grants awarded to a tech company run by Ms Arcuri.
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She moved to California last year with her British partner Matthew Hickey and their young daughter.
Last week, Boris vehemently denied separate claims made by a journalist that he groped her at a lunch event in 1999.
Charlotte Edwardes claimed in a Sunday Times column that Boris, then editor of The Spectator, grabbed her leg and touched another woman.
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