Still no sign of Evgeny Lebedev in the House of Lords, where he faces being dropped as a member after failing to show up for an entire session. The House of Lords Reform Act 2014 is unambiguous on this point.
This must be a bitter disappointment to Lord David Owen, who said in his response to Lebedev’s maiden speech in May last year that he hoped to be hearing a lot more from him in the Upper House.
I last interviewed Owen – an unrepentant Brexiter with a fondness for oligarchs – around the turn of the millennium. I recall him banging on about a mineral trading group he then chaired called Middlesex Holdings that had extensive interests in Russia.
Owen’s business dealings brought him into close contract with another oligarch, Alisher Usmanov, who spent six years in a Soviet prison in the 1980s on charges of fraud and embezzlement. His conviction was later overturned.
