The former Conservative party chair, Brandon Lewis, will be paid £250,000 a year to advise a company part-owned by two Russian oligarchs with sanctions placed against them.
The job at LetterOne, an investment group 49% owned by Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, is Lewis’s fifth on top of his role as an MP, and his total earnings will come to almost £500,000 a year.
The £250,000 salary from LetterOne will be paid to a personal services company, Bergo Holdings, owned by Lewis and his wife. He will work for the company for eight hours a week – meaning with his other roles he will spend about 14 hours a week on work aside from his £89,000-a-year job as an MP.
Lewis, a former justice secretary and ex-chair of the Conservative party, was given approval this month by the watchdog on post-government jobs to take up the position.
However, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), which regulates post-government jobs, imposed conditions that prevent Lewis lobbying the government on LetterOne’s behalf for two years from his last day in office.
It also said that Lewis must have no involvement in a judicial review brought against the government by LetterOne, which is challenging a decision to require it to sell a fibre business called Upp, citing a “risk to national security”.
LetterOne, chaired by Mervyn Davies, a former banker and ex-Labour government minister, says it is now entirely separate from Fridman and Aven, who had sanctions imposed on them in 2022. The company has investments in brands such as the health food chain Holland & Barrett.
Fridman and Aven are still major shareholders, although their stakes were frozen after the imposition of UK and EU sanctions following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Lewis will chair the advisory council on corporate governance at LetterOne. He said after his appointment: “LetterOne has travelled a huge distance since Putin’s abhorrent invasion of Ukraine. It is now fully separate from its sanctioned founders and focused on investments that are vital for society as well as being one of the biggest corporate donors of aid to Ukraine.”
