Gething donor married to peer who chairs group founded by sanctioned Russian oligarch

Martin Shipton

A donor to Vaughan Gething’s leadership campaign is married to a former minister with links to a Russian oligarch, who has been described as close to Vladimir Putin.

Lady Jeanne Marie Davies is married to Lord Mervyn Davies, who was a Trade Minister in Gordon Brown’s government from January 2009 until May 2010. An entry in the Electoral Commission’s political donations register shows that Lady Davies donated £21,600 to Mr Gething’s leadership campaign.

Lord Davies, whose title is Baron Jones of Abersoch, was educated at Rydal Penrhos School in Colwyn Bay. He began his career in banking with the Midland Bank, later taken over by HSBC.

In 2015 Lord Davies was appointed deputy chairman of the LetterOne Group, an investment business in the energy, technology and telecom sectors. The group was founded by Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman, who was described as “a top Russian financier and enabler of Putin’s inner circle”. In 2019 Lord Davies became the group’s chairman.

Ukraine

Weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Mr Fridman, who owns a £65m home in north London and is worth an estimated £10.9bn, was hit with EU sanctions freezing his assets. At the time Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, who at the time chaired the House of Commons’ Foreign Affairs Committee and is now Minister of Security at the Home Office, called on Lord Davies to step down as CapitalOne’s chairman, saying: “Some moments demand a choice – this is one.”

Shortly before the invasion, as Russian troops mobilised near the border with Ukraine, Lord Davies defended Mr Fridman in a statement to the Mail on Sunday in which he said: “Mikhail is a gifted, tough and entirely non-political entrepreneur. A long term investor who loves and lives in the UK.”

But a week after the invasion, Mr Davies and LetterOne’s chief executive Jonathan Muir issued a joint statement that said: “ Mikhail Fridman and [his business partner] Petr Aven have stepped down from the LetterOne board. As a result, they will no longer have any involvement with or influence over the business or its investments. They will not receive dividends, communications or any funds or economic resources, directly or indirectly. Their assets in the business are effectively frozen, they have no rights as shareholders and – if sanctions are lifted – the board is under no obligation to return these rights.

“We want to be clear that LetterOne is not impacted by these sanctions. Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven own less than 50% of LetterOne shares and have no control of the business. I believe these steps are the right ones in light of the shocking and deeply saddening invasion of Ukraine. It is a war that Russia must stop. The total priority for us and our team is LetterOne. Through our investments, we support 120,000 jobs. We are and will remain long term investors in brilliant businesses – including Holland and Barrett and UPP in the UK, Dia in Spain, Destination Pet in the US, WDEA in Germany and many more.”

Pay increase

Lord Davies did not stand down from the LetterOne board and it later emerged that he received a sharp increase in pay from the group, picking up $40m to cover his work for 2021 and 2022.

In September 2023 the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation of HM Treasury updated the text of the financial sanctions notice related to Mr Fridman. He became referred to as “an involved person under the Russia regulations” instead of “a prominent Russian businessman and pro-Kremlin oligarch”. Additionally, a phrase alleging close ties between Mikhail Fridman and President Putin was deleted from the document.

On September 5, 2023, the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) announced in absentia that Mr Fridman was suspected of violating Article 110 of the Criminal Code, which provides for liability for financing actions to seize power, overthrow the constitutional order, or change the territory of the state. Under this article, he could face up to eight years in prison with confiscation of property. The SSU believes that since the start of the conflict, the banker has invested about two billion rubles in Russian defense enterprises, in particular, in the Tula Cartridge Plant.

Legal challenge

In April 2024, following a legal challenge, The General Court of the European Union took Mr Fridman off the EU sanctions list.

Meanwhile concerns continued over the idea to hand over unspent donations to Mr Gething’s leadership campaign to the Labour Party. Mr Gething has said the money – amounting to more than £31,600 – should be spent on diversity projects. But a Labour insider said “Team Vaughan are in a mess of their own making. Whatever evidence they have, they’ve had for a week and a half. They chose to use it to sack Hannah yesterday to distract from the donations deadline. They then threw more mud in the air, inventing a non-existent diversity scheme that the money could be spent on. Diversity promotion probably means not pulling stunts like sacking Wales’ most prominent lesbian politician.

“It’s all a distraction from the fact that this money is going to Labour’s general funds. We now need politicians in Pembrokeshire to say whether they are comfortable that this money is spent on leaflets in a county where the donor is making people’s lives miserable.

“And you do not use ministerial sackings as part of your crisis comms plan.”

Secretary of State for Wales David TC Davies said: “This [the idea of spending the excess money on diversity projects] is just another pathetic smokescreen in a desperate bid to justify why the money was accepted.

“Quite frankly, the public is sick to death of these constant excuses. They want to see someone delivering for Wales, not dragging it down.”