Russia-linked electricity cable to UK delayed by ‘national security concerns’

A major infrastructure project to send electricity across the English Channel is being held up over “significant national security concerns”, i can reveal.

Defence Secretary Grant Shapps is understood to have concerns over the firm set to run the project, Aquind, and its directors’ links to Russia.

Aquind is run and owned by men who all have historic links to Moscow, including one director who once worked for the Russian Defence Ministry.

Although they originate from Russia or Ukraine, they are all now British citizens and are long-standing critics of the Vladimir Putin regime in the Kremlin. Aquind strongly refutes any allegations of national security concerns.

In January, the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) paused the £1.2bn scheme to run the high voltage direct current cable from Lovedean near Portsmouth across the Channel to Barnabos in Normandy, after the Ministry of Defence (MoD) intervened to address “concerns” it has over the project.

In its letter to David Wagstaff, head of energy infrastructure planning at DESNZ, on 7 March, the MoD said it had “significant national security concerns” over the project and requested a six-week extension to the deadline to submit further evidence. It is understood this extension was granted.

While the MoD’s letter to DESNZ did not reveal the full nature of the MoD’s concerns, i understands that the historic Russian links of the firm has caught the attention of Mr Shapps.

MoD and intelligence sources, as well as two former defence secretaries have also aired concerns over the project.

According to the sources, the MoD’s concerns are based on the historic links to Russia. One of the directors, Alexander Temerko, faces corruption charges in Moscow.

One source said: “The people running Aquind all have close, if historical, links to Russia, including with Moscow defence ministry. That has to raise red flags whether or not they insist they are anti-Putin or not.”

Another senior source within the MoD, when asked about concerns over the Russian links, added: “We’re looking at all the details you have described.”

Former defence secretary, Penny Mordaunt has also raised a third potential risk to national security should the project be given the green light.

The current Leader of the House of Commons warned that the project would make Britain more reliant for its electricity on France, which has threatened to interrupt supplies in disputes over post-Brexit fishing deals.

A spokesman for Ms Mordaunt told i: “This scheme is not wanted or needed. The Government has already turned it down once.

“It will be in both Portsmouth’s and the national interest if it is finally confirmed as a no go.”

Another source familiar with Ms Mordaunt’s view added: “Penny completely shares the concerns of the MoD.”

In January 2022, then business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng refused permission for the electricity link, which would provide electricity for around four million homes, stating that there were “more appropriate alternatives to the proposed route”.

However, 12 months later Aquind successfully overturned Kwarteng’s decision in the High Court and initial work on the link was underway until the MoD paused the project.

Former home secretary Suella Braverman also has concerns about the project.

A source close to Ms Braverman, who received daily briefings from the security services during her time at Home Office, told i: “This isn’t right for the community in Hampshire nor the country.”

A spokesman for Aquind and its directors accused the MoD concerns as “racist and xenophobic”.

He said: “We will never respond to racist and xenophobic accusations – based on childish conspiracy theories – such as these. Alexander Temerko, Viktor Fedotov and the other directors of Aquind are British citizens. The situation described regarding these allegations’ impact on the DCO process is an absolute lie, with no relation to reality. We do not believe that our Conservative friends Penny Mordaunt MP and Suella Braverman MP would ever condone such stupid xenophobic and racist comments.”

Ms Mordaunt and Ms Braveman decline to respond to Aquind’s comments.

Aquind, Mr Temerko and his previous British company have donated more than £1.7m to the Conservative Party, Tory MPs or Tory fundraising clubs since 2012.

A MoD spokesman said: “It would be inappropriate to comment on a re-determination process whilst it is still ongoing, or on the nature of the concerns which MoD might submit to that process.”

Aquind’s Russian links explained

The group is run and owned by men who all have close historical links to Moscow, including a Ukrainian-born part-owner who once worked for the Russian Defence Ministry.

Aquind, which is part-owned by Russian oil and gas tycoon Victor Fedotov, has donated £700,000 to the Tory party and Conservative MPs since the Aquind project began, including £72,500 to chancellor Jeremy Hunt between July 2019 and February 2021.

In 2021, it emerged that Mr Fedotov secretly co-owned a company called VNIIST that benefitted from hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts from Transneft, the Russian state-owned oil and gas pipeline company.

A 2008 audit report suggested Transneft had lost huge sums to corruption and that one of the contractors that had benefitted was VNIIST.

Mr Fedotov has always strenuously denied the allegations, which emerged in the leaked Pandora Papers.

Mr Temerko and his son Vladimir have donated £749,000 to the Tory party as individuals. Mr Temerko Snr has given and a further £450,000 via an oil and gas engineering company he was once a director of called Offshore Group Newcastle.

During the events preceding the dissolution of the USSR, Mr Temerko Snr became a prominent figure in the team of former president Boris Yeltsin.

From early 1992, he held a series of positions in charge of supplies and armaments in Moscow’s Defence Ministry.

He made his fortune in Russia’s oil and gas sector, but fled to London shortly after he was examined by criminal investigators in October 2004. In December 2005 Vladimir Putin failed to extradite him back to Moscow to face corruption charges.

Mr Temerko has consistently maintained he is a strong political critic of Putin and has regularly voiced his opposition to Russian war in Ukraine.

Kirill Glukhovskoy is the managing director of Aquind and a former lawyer to some of Russia’s largest oil and gas companies, including Yukos. He was also on the legal team at Interros, the Russian conglomerate run by Russia wealthiest man and Putin ally, Vladimir Potanin.

Mr Potanin, who is worth around £24bn, was also Russia’s deputy prime minister under Yeltsin and was subject to UK sanctions for being one of the major oligarchs in “President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle” following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2014.

Mr Glukhovskoy also worked alongside Mr Temerko Snr at Offshore Group Newscastle between April 2002 and April 2004, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Richard Glasspool, a British-born director at Aquind, is former partner at KPMG Russia and former executive at a Russian bank run by Putin-friendly oligarch Roman Avdeev.

A chartered accountant from Southampton, who is fluent in Russian, worked at KPMG for 17 years, first as an adviser on Russia, Poland, Bulgaria and the Middle East, then as a partner in KPMG Bulgaria, and finally as a partner in KPMG Russia.

From 2007-2008 he was a director on the board of Russian insurer RESO Garantia. From March-October 2008 he was a director on the board, and head of the audit committee, of Sobinbank.

From 2008-2014, Mr Glasspool also sat on the supervisory board of the Credit Bank of Moscow, the bank controlled by Putin ally Roman Avdeev.

While Mr Avdeev is not subject to sanctions himself, his bank was subject to the UK’s asset freezing restrictions after the Kremlin went to war in Ukraine.