SCOTTISH Tory leader Ruth Davidson is still to have a £20,000 lunch that a Russian banker secured at a lavish Conservative party fundraiser in London.
Lubov Chernukhin, whose husband was Vladimir Putin’s deputy finance minister, bid for the meal in February but no date has been scheduled.
An SNP spokesperson said: "Not for the first time, Ruth Davidson has left herself open to charges of rank hypocrisy – one minute she's slamming Putin's regime, the next her party is taking tens of thousands from one of his former Ministers to swell the Tory party coffers.
"While she might have put the lunch on hold for political expediency, there's no indication the Tories have handed back the cash. If she doesn't take that firmer line we can only assume she prefers sanctimonious soundbites to serious action."
UK relations with Putin hit a new low in March after Prime Minister Theresa May publicly blamed Russia for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury. The assassination bid came 12 years after former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in a Mayfair hotel, a murder that a judicial inquiry pinned on the Kremlin. May, backed by other European Union leaders and the US, stepped up sanctions against Russia, which denied culpability. However, despite May’s strong actions, the Skripal poisonings led to scrutiny of the donations given to the Tories by wealthy Russians living in the UK.
In February, weeks before the international incident in Salisbury, Mrs Chernukhin bid £20,000 at an auction at the UK party’s Black and White fundraising ball to dine with Davidson. She has been a regular donor to the Tories since 2012, including paying £30,000 at the same event this year to have dinner with Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson.
Mrs Chernukhin also paid £160,000 in 2014 for a tennis match with David Cameron and Boris Johnson, who were at that point Prime Minister and mayor of London.
Johnson recently confirmed that he did play tennis with Mrs Chernukhin. He told the BBC: “Unless and until evidence is produced against individual Russians, I do not think that the entire nation should be calumnified.”
A 2014 profile of the Chernukhins noted that details of the couple’s lavish lifestyle were revealed in a legal dispute involving Mr Chernukhin, who had instructed a wealth management firm to buy a private jet that was never delivered.
The Times profile added: “Mr Chernukhin was on good terms with Vladimir Putin in the early years of his presidency. He served in the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Trade and as deputy finance minister from 2000 to 2002. By presidential decree he was appointed chairman of a state-owned bank and awarded an Order of Honour from Mr Putin in 2004. What happened then is unclear. Mr Chernukhin is said to have fallen out of favour.”
Cameron, responding to criticism of earlier donations from Mrs Chernukhin when he was Prime Minister, said in 2014 that Mrs Chernukhin "certainly wasn't” a Putin crony.
A Scottish Tory spokesman confirmed that Davidson and Mrs Chernukhin had not yet had the lunch – nearly six months after the fundraiser.
Asked if the banker had been in touch, a spokesperson said: “There’s no date for it.”
Davidson has been a staunch critic of Putin and used one of her appearances at First Minister’s Questions to describe RT, a broadcaster funded by the Russian state, as a “propaganda mouthpiece”.
Mrs Chernukhin could not be reached.
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