A major Tory party donor who was described in Parliament as being “absolutely dependent” on the Russian security services, managed to secure the removal of his name from a report on kleptocracy by a UK policy institute.
Dmitry Leus, who was born in Turkmenistan and moved to the UK in 2015, was convicted of money laundering in Russia in 2004. Speaking in the Commons in July, Labour MP Liam Byrne claimed Leus had since been recruited by the Russian spy agency, the FSB, which Byrne alleged had secured his release from prison in 2006.
Byrne said: “There is clear knowledge of his recruitment by the FSB, who got him out of prison. He has a criminal record in Russia, and according to intelligence sources that I have seen, he is ‘absolutely dependent on the FSB’.”
