Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is once again embroiled in controversy, much like his time in office. The Guardian has found a trove of documents -- nicknamed 'The Boris Files' -- that suggest Johnson has made a profit off his time serving as prime minister.
The new-found files have connected Johnson to foreign leaders, shady payments and flouting of rules his own government had put in place. The files were reportedly orignially obtained by Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS) -- a US-based nonprofit whistleblower site founded in 2018 for news leaks.
Here is what was revealed in files, as per The Guardian:
1) Johnson lobbied a senior Saudi official he had met while in office, asking him to share a pitch with the petrostate’s autocratic crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, for a firm he co-chairs.
2) The ex-PM received more than £200,000 from a hedge fund after meeting Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro – contrary to statements he was not paid.
3) While in office, Johnson appears to have held a secret meeting with Peter Thiel, the billionaire who founded the controversial US data firm Palantir, months before it was given a role managing NHS data.
4) In an apparent breach of Covid pandemic rules, Johnson hosted a dinner for a Tory peer who financed a lavish refurbishment of his Downing Street flat, a day after the second national Covid-19 lockdown came into force.
Leaving 10 Downing Street was a political hammer blow for Boris Johnson but is doing no harm to his depleted bank balance.
The former prime minister was paid more than $325,000 for just one speech at a US insurance industry event, according to an updated list of British MPs' register of interests released in 2022.
When he became Britain's leader in 2019, the former journalist was forced to give up a lucrative round of newspaper articles and after-dinner speeches, and got into more than one financial scrape as prime minister.
The ousted prime minister is doing some things for free.
As of October 2022, Johnson declared that he is serving in the unpaid role of president of "Conservative Friends of Ukraine", building on his outspoken support as premier against Russia's invasion.
