I was on the political committee of the Carlton Club, which is the oldest. conservative club, an old gentleman's club. There was a call on my mobile phone. It's 2011 and our story begins with a meeting in London's exclusive Conservative Private Members Club, the Carlton Club. between a man called Sergei and a bespectacled Russian diplomat newly posted to the capital. He introduced himself, said that he was a diplomat in the political section.
The curiosity got the better of the cat, and I thought maybe I should meet him. The man from the embassy sounded harmless enough. But there was nothing innocent about this rendezvous inside the venerable Carlton Club. Just a stone's throw from the Ritz on St. James's Street. A place where the carpets are thick, the port is strong and a strict dress code applies at all times.
He said he knows Russian companies that would like to donate to the Conservative Party. It would take Sergei down a path he'd been trying to avoid for years. Things can change really quickly. 180 degrees in Russia. This is a story about Sergei Christo. a Russian-born British citizen. stumbled into one small corner of Vladimir Putin's plot against the West.
It's a story that involves Trump and Brexit and later the invasion of Ukraine. It's the biggest spy story since the Cambridge Five scandalised Britain in the second half of the 20th century. when the Soviet Union penetrated the highest echelon turning intelligence officers into double agents. What kind of work were you doing for the Russians then inside the MI5? The information that I passed to them was almost exclusively about German intelligence services.
What shocked people most profoundly then is that the targets were establishment figures educated at the best public schools and recruited while studying at Cambridge University. Was he then the master talent spotter at Cambridge at that time? And this is an attempt to tell the story of another piece of hidden British history. A suspected hostile influence campaign targeting people working at the highest levels of British politics.
least three Russian intelligence officers. And the ex-Prime Minister of Great Britain. Самма-пати, организатором которого выступил Conservative Friends of Russia. as treason, and they are treated as traitors. He just said it's not Russia. I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. In the last several hours, Russia has invaded Ukraine. The onslaught began just before dawn with a barrage of missiles on multiple targets.
right across the country. I'm Carol Cadwallader, an investigative journalist with The Guardian and Observer. And I'm Peter Jukes, the founder and executive editor of Byline Times. And this... Is Sergei and the Westminster spy ring? Episode one, a meeting at the Carleton.
Everything you've just told me we need to do on things. And don't worry, I'm not going to get you into trouble. Although, you know, obviously you had a little bit of trouble. This is Sergei. I've been speaking to him for a number of years now. And I can attest that despite what he says, he really does like a bit of trouble. Sergei is a British citizen. He was born and grew up in Russia. And the time this story begins in 2011 is in his late 30s.
and is working in asset management. When one day he gets a phone call. Hello? I was working doing something at my desk, and there was a phone call on my mobile phone. He introduced himself, said that he was a diplomat in the political section, and that somebody... in the embassy gave him my number and recommended me. As a person who can talk about...
Conservative Party and British politics. The man told Sergei that he worked at the Russian embassy and introduced himself as the political first secretary. He was also called Sergei. Sergey Nalobin. He struck me a bit strange from the very beginning, despite my sort of initial reservations. The curiosity got the better of the cat and I thought maybe I should meet him, just find out what he wants. Nalobin was a link to a Russia that Sergei had decided to leave in the early 90s.
Even back then, he could see that moving from a communist one-party state to a modern, tolerant democracy was going to be tricky. Despite what George Bush Sr. and many people in the West believed. During these last few months, you and I have witnessed one of the greatest dramas of the 20th century. the historic and revolutionary transformation of a totalitarian dictatorship, the Soviet Union, and the liberation of its people.
It's a victory for the moral force of our values. I came to England in 1993 because I thought that I wouldn't live long enough to see Russia change. the way I wanted to. So Gay was 18 in 1991 when communism collapsed. plunging the country into years of... chaos and economic crisis. Our economy is still on the ground floor and we have a long way to go. But a handful of well-placed businessmen acquired vast previously state-owned enterprises and overnight made millions.
Sergei saw up close the perilous ways power could change hands in Russia. Gorbachev was imprisoned. in his Black Sea residence. Mikhail Gorbachev has been vacationing in the Black Sea resort area and has not been seen since the takeover. And there was an attempt to instill a military type regime. Tanks are moving into the capital. taking up positions near key government buildings. Outside the Russian parliament building, crowds began gathering early this morning.
And one thought that first came to my mind when that happened on that morning was that things can change really quickly. turn 180 degrees in Russia. And any positive changes that I made are very fragile. and that at any time, you know, democratic changes that have been achieved could be reversed. And then my next thought was that, you know, I wouldn't leave probably long enough to see Russia change and become a truly free country. And that kind of eventually led me to immigration.
Sergei moved to London in 1993. And for the following year, he turned his hand to any opportunities that came his way. I worked in McDonald's for three months. And I worked as a language assistant for a Russian tutor at the college in London as well. And then I was asked to chaperone Russian animators coming from Soyuz Multfilm in Moscow to do a project. They did this sort of animated operas.
Whilst I was in taxi with them, shopperoning them from the airport to the hotel, they used to tell me all kinds of different stories about their project. And I thought it was really, really interesting. I should get it on air. Good evening and welcome to the Russian Soviet Union. Having successfully pitched his story to the BBC Russian service, Sergei began freelancing for them in 1994.
Alongside regular shifts, reporting, presenting and producing, he studied for a degree in communications. And in 2000, he changed tack, shifting into asset management. It was at this point that Sergei a member of the Conservative Party. By the start of the new millennium, he was a rising young star in the party's volunteer ranks. I was on the committee of...
Fast Track, a donor club for young conservatives, and then became vice chairman. Organized lots of events with interesting speakers, knew the cabinet, knew the leader, everybody. A decade on, and Sergei had settled into a role at the center of the establishment. At that point in 2011, I was on the political committee of the Carlton Club, which is the oldest conservative club, an old gentleman's club.
The Carlton Club Political Committee is also a fundraising body, and I was on that committee. You were deep in the heart of the Conservative Party, Sergei. Well, kind of deep in the heart of the periphery of the Conservative Party. But back to that phone call Sergei received in 2011. Mr Nalobin, the man from the embassy who called Sergei out of the blue, had been told about his contacts in the Conservative Party.
When I told him that it was only fundraising, he said, oh, that's all right. You know, we also can help a lot with fundraising. That kind of raised my ears. He said that on the phone? He did first eventually, yes. And I was quite cautious, you know, the memory of Litvinenko obviously quite fresh. So I think we just need to stop here for a moment because the man who Sergei is talking about...
is Alexander Litvinenko, an important character in this story. Yes, we'll be talking to his wife Marina later on. But for now, all you need to know is that he was a Russian spy who'd served with Vladimir Putin in the FSB and then blew the whistle between the state security services and organized crime. And in 2006... he was murdered here in London. Murdered in a brutal and bizarre way with a radioactive isotope.
I'm sorry to announce that Alexander Litvenenko died at University College Hospital at 9.21 on the 23rd of November 2006. Everything about polonium 210 is regulated by the state. Its transportation is regulated. I think it was a seminal moment for lots of people because I think for a long time we believed that we were safe in the UK. Sergei's nervousness was understandable. The poisoning and murder of Litvinenko five years earlier
had sent shockwaves through the Russian community in London. Putin had begun his second term as president and his KGB roots in Dresden were beginning to show. He was the first spy master to actually run Russia. was unflinching. If they change sides, that is treated as treason, and they are treated as traitors. Treason is not only the gravest crime possible, but also the most despicable crime that one...
He told the Financial Times in 2019. Putin actually repeated twice, traitors must be punished. So I asked Nalobin if we could meet at the culting club. This is where Sergei liked to spend time, and he was on its political committee, which, among other things, helped with fundraising. And apart from being his cosy home from home in the capital, a place steeped in London's Tory establishment past, the club's history had other advantages.
I mean it's kind of an obvious suggestion but for some people who don't know. The Carlton Club was bombed in the 80s by the IRA. Glass came flying out, the windows came flying out of this building opposite, which we then found out was the Carlton Club. So as a consequence, there was a police
camera on the building and the cameras inside so it's all closely monitored. So you're sitting in the Carlton club. Describe the Carlton club to me. What's it like? It's very grand on the inside. It's very grand. The real Carlton club was in Pell-Mell but it was bombed during the war. So they moved to the smaller building, which apparently conservative members absolutely hated. It was such a dingy little building. But then they grew to like it.
So suddenly this little man turns up. Smallish, fattish, boldish, with spectacles. Looks a bit like a professor. and wearing one of those shabka, you know, with the ears coming down. Oh, what, like the full Russian kind of hat? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very innocent kind of looking, you know. And so we started chatting. We were in the tea room on the first floor.
That's where the table with the papers was. He grabbed the telegraph, flicked the pages and opened... on a page with an article, and he said, oh, yes, this article, we all read this article at the embassy. And just a bit of background here on what was going on at this time. An alleged spy, a young Russian woman, had had an affair with a Lib Dem MP she was working as a researcher for. MI5 believed it was suspicious and were trying to get her deported.
And on the table is a newspaper that Nalobin says has got the Russian embassy talking. The article, while focusing on the high-profile honeypot case, claimed that there were now more spies in London than there were at the height of the Cold War. And crucially, the author of that article is a Russian defector. possibly the highest-placed double agent that the British intelligence services have ever turned. And he's friends with Sergei. We're going to come back to him.
He pointed at Oleg's picture saying, Oleg looks quite good. Is he well? I kind of mumbled, you know, yes, yes, he is well, everything. But I registered that clearly. Nalobin was very interested in Oleg Gordievsky. SoCal Nalobin, our short bespectacled diplomat, is essentially telling Sergei here, in the first breath of their first meeting, that the Russian embassy knows he's a friend of the great defector.
That's kind of a big deal isn't it? It's a massive deal I think. That's the Russian state saying that they are watching Sergei, they know who he's friends with, and he's friends with the man who they consider perhaps one of their number one enemies. Back at the Carlton Club, Sergei Christo is taking tea with this owlish Sergei in the lobby.
So tell me about the conversation. What was he trying to get out of you? Well, that was the thing, because he kind of, when he was urging me to meet, it sounded quite serious. So I was like thinking, you know, he was going to ask me some serious questions. But it was all kind of chit-chat. And one question was about the relationship between Boris Johnson and David Cameron, who was Prime Minister at the time.
And he was basically asking me whether they had a real rivalry between them, whether it was real or was it just something that the press made up. I mean, at the time, no, when he asked me, my first thought was, God, he was going to ask me serious questions. He's asking me this ridiculous stuff, you know. It's a small but maybe telling detail. The then Prime Minister David Cameron and then Mayor of London Boris Johnson were arch rivals. It was a rivalry that had begun in their school day.
when they were both pupils at the prestigious Eton College. And it continued at university, when they both went to Oxford just a year apart, and both became members of the elitist and notorious Bullingdon Club. It was a rivalry that years later would see Cameron and Johnson campaigning on opposite sides of the Brexit campaign. A campaign that would ultimately raise Johnson's star and see him emerge victorious in the top job as prime minister.
And it seems it was that rivalry, that psychological flaw that Sergei Nolobin had sniffed out already and was seeking more information about. But that wasn't the only thing he was interested in sussing out. He actually did ask me about setting up a friends group. Sergei here is talking about the practice of setting up groups for MPs and business people and interested parties to build closer relationships with different countries. such as friends of Israel, friends of Ukraine, and so on.
I laughed, I thought it was a joke. And I said, well, you know that normally friends of conservative groups are set up with countries, you know, where we have strong friendship. And then he said to me, yeah, but how about Friends of China? I said, well, this is slightly different because we have a big Chinese community in England.
And then he said, we have Russian companies that would like to contribute to the Conservative Party. I thought that was illegal. That's the one that raised the real red flag. right it was and still is illegal under british law foreign individuals or companies cannot donate to british political parties and yet this conversation suggests that's what
Robin was proposing. It was clear to Sergei that something felt very wrong and he needed to do something about it. The question was, what? Sergei did the only thing he could think of. He called the spooks. I rang up the public line of the security service. and they asked me the name of the diplomat. Shortly afterwards I received a call from a young officer and we met up in a cafe. And he took all the information and said that he will go away.
and come back to me. After a brief meeting and the MI5 agents promised to follow up, Sergei heard nothing and is beginning to get twitchy. There was a number for me to call. So, you know, I called him in a week, couple of weeks, and there was no answer. And there was just this, you know, just silence. So then I wrote a letter to the director general saying that this is what happened and I'm not hearing back.
And suddenly, after maybe a couple of months, they called back and invited me to a meeting in the government building. And it was attended by two people, this very, very young. extremely intelligence officer who met me first and somebody quite senior at that meeting i again told the whole story and offered them to record It's not as if Sergei was a complete novice at this. While working for the BBC, he'd actually gone undercover for the channels...
flagship investigative programme, Panorama. We've recruited Sergei, a Russian journalist, to join them. He'd infiltrated a human trafficking gang and obtained evidence of illegal activity. The reason I didn't ask Nalobin you know, ask him to expand on what company's details, because I knew from the project for Panorama Secret Filming, and I knew that if you ask once, the second time you ask, it looks suspicious.
So I needed to get to the right moment. What was your sort of impression of how they received this information? There was a very offhand kind of attitude, very superior attitude. almost like treating me like an idiot, you know. That was really off-putting. This blasé attitude is beginning to make Sergei feel vulnerable. But who can he turn to? Why is it so hard to get the British authorities to take this seriously? And what is Sergei Nalobin ultimately trying to do?
I had the suspicion that Nalobin was behind it because there was some sort of signature. All my previous contacts with the embassy were all very careful, very measured. Nalobin was quite aggressive. Next time, Hussiwad and a lavish party. Thank you for listening to Sergei and the Westminster Spy Ring. For more exclusive content linked to the show, go to...
The series is presented and written by me, Carol Cadwallader, and Peter Dukes. The producer and sound designer is Ruth Abrahams, with original music by Phil Channel. Studio production is by Sean Byrne Roberts. Location production is by... It's mixed by Nigel Appleton and the series comes to you from Project Citizen.