Boris Johnson struggled to keep his private life out of the public eye even before he met Jennifer Arcuri. But his relationship with the American businesswoman has been the most awkward for him. While he has escaped a criminal investigation by the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC), he will still face difficult questions from a City Hall watchdog about their friendship while he was the mayor of London, and why he didn’t declare it. The nature of the relationship became the subject of public scrutiny after it emerged last year that Arcuri had benefited from thousands of pounds in public money, including from the mayor’s promotional agency, London and Partners (L&P). She was also given coveted places on trade missions to New York and Tel Aviv alongside Johnson, despite failing to meet the criteria for those trips. Her place on the trips was allegedly secured after intervention from the mayor’s office. Emails from officials about Arcuri’s place on those trips was among evidence examined by the IOPC before it decided to take no further action. One, from February 2013, described Arcuri as being “close to Boris”. Another said Arcuri had been “speaking to Boris” and one of his officials about her being in New York at the time of the trade mission, and they were “both apparently happy with that”. Those emails are now likely to form a key part of an investigation by the London assembly’s oversight committee, which had put its inquiry on hold in deference to the IOPC. While deciding against a criminal investigation, the IOPC’s 112-page report did conclude that Johnson should have declared an interest, and that this failure could have amounted to a breach of the Greater London assembly’s code of conduct. It said his failure to ensure a “complete separation between him and this decision-making” over places on trade missions “could be construed as a breach of the broader Nolan principles in the sense that he could see that Ms Arcuri was obtaining a networking opportunity via the mayor’s own business enterprise agency (L&P)”. It also found “evidence to suggest that those officers making decisions about sponsorship monies and attendance on trade missions thought that there was a close relationship between Mr Johnson and Ms Arcuri, and this influenced their decision-making”. Johnson has maintained that he had no interest to declare over Arcuri, but she says otherwise. After the pair met in 2011 at an “electrifying” encounter in October 2011, the then mayor made up to 10 visits to her home office in Shoreditch, she has said. And he spoke for free at four events hosted by Arcuri and her start-up company, Innotech.
Johnson was aware of how the relationship would be construed, according to Arcuri. And she was frustrated by his unwillingness to officially acknowledge what she later described as a “very special relationship”. However, there was no mention of Arcuri or her company in the mayor’s official list of interests, and his official diary made no mention of her. It recorded only two of the four Innotech events where he spoke. On 28 February 2013, Arcuri told Johnson’s communications director, Will Walden, that she “spoke to the man last night” when she appeared to be trying to book the mayor to speak at one of her conferences. Johnson’s diary for 27 February 2013 lists eight appointments, but the last two are redacted because they relate to personal information about the mayor. Johnson refused to answer Arcuri’s calls as news of their friendship broke in the Sunday Times last year. It was this that appears in part to have motivated her to give several broadcast and print interviews. “Why should I remain silent if you can’t even speak to me?” she told Johnson through an interview with the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire show. She complained that she had been “fed to the lions”.
Arcuri has repeatedly insisted that she secured funds and favours on merit, but she acknowledged that Johnson should have been transparent about the relationship. “He knew there was a potential for conflict, and this is why he never did anything,” she told Bloomberg. By contrast, Johnson has insisted that he had nothing to declare and had acted with “full propriety”. However, he could not claim ignorance of the rules. Months before Johnson met Arcuri, he and his staff were given compulsory training on the importance of acknowledging personal friendships. The training was insisted upon by City Hall’s standards committee after it rebuked Johnson for failing to acknowledge his personal relationship with Helen Macintyre, an unpaid adviser who gave birth to his daughter in 2008. Judging by Arcuri’s account, the training had little effect. She told ITV: “He used to always get worried[, saying]: ‘People are going to question about my interest’. And I say: ‘No they won’t, because I’m here because of my own right’.” While Johnson has always been reluctant to acknowledge their friendship, Arcuri has conversely been boastful. “I’ve got Boris wrapped around my little finger,” Mike Butcher, the editor of Tech Crunch, recalls her saying at the time. She listed Johnson as “Alexander the Great” on her phone, in reference to Johnson’s first name. In December 2012, she told a friend she was seeing “AtheGreat” for lunch. She had a cake made for one of the events where he spoke that included three icing figurines of Johnson, which she later ate for the camera. Johnson’s friendliness with Arcuri was plain to see in video footage of his Innotech appearances. “I’m always happy to hang out at Innotech,” he told an event in 2014. At a launch event for the company in 2012 he said: “Viva Innotech, folks, and forward with all your deliberations. Will that do, Jennifer? Can I go yet?” Announcing the resumption of the London assembly inquiry, Len Duvall, a Labour member who chairs the oversight committee, said: “Everyone who holds public office, whether you’re the mayor of London, or indeed the prime minister, is expected to adhere to the principles of public life – including integrity, selflessness, openness and honesty, to name a few. “Our investigation will consider whether Boris Johnson conducted himself in a way that’s expected from anyone in that position. It’s important we get those answers, because Londoners deserve to have their politicians held accountable.”