Ed Miliband attacks David Cameron over Russian oligarch donations

David Cameron has come under further pressure over Russian oligarchs’ donations to his Conservative party with the opposition Labour leader saying the British prime minister has “questions to answer” as EU leaders debate imposing sanctions on Moscow.

Mr Cameron’s calls for tougher curbs on Russia were undermined this week when it emerged that his party had accepted a £160,000 donation from the wife of a former Russian finance minister in exchange for a tennis game with the prime minister and Boris Johnson, the mayor of London. Lubov Chernukhin, a banker and wife of Vladimir Chernukhin, made the winning bid at an auction for the match at the Conservatives’ summer party this month.

Ed Miliband raised concerns about his political opponents’ financial links with Russian figures, telling the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday that the prime minister needed to be more open about his fundraising arrangements.

“David Cameron does have questions to answer on the money he’s taking from Russian oligarchs, on the bidding for a tennis match,” the Labour leader said. “You know, frankly, you can’t stand up one minute and say, this is the biggest issue and we’re going to take the right action, you’ve got to really look very very carefully on who he’s getting money from.”

Mr Miliband also called on the EU to step up its diplomacy in response to the shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine. “The heads of government of Europe should be meeting, they shouldn’t just be leaving it to the foreign ministers,” he said. “We need to raise sanctions on Russia, on individual corporations that have been part of what happened around the big decisions that have been made.”

The question of how to respond to the air crash has caused turmoil in Europe this week, with the head of France’s ruling Socialist party accusing Mr Cameron of hypocrisy for urging Paris to scrap the sale of two Mistral-class warships to Russia, while London was acting as a refuge for wealthy Russians. Pressure on Mr Cameron over Russian donations intensified when the widow of murdered spy Alexander Litvinenko said he should return the tennis match donation. “If David Cameron doesn’t want to appear like he is being bought, I think he should return this money,” she said.

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Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, also stepped up his rhetoric against Russia over the weekend, arguing that the country should be stripped of the 2018 World Cup.

The Liberal Democrat leader said that if Mr Putin continued with his “belligerent behaviour”, it was “unthinkable” that the tournament could go ahead in the country blamed by the West for supplying arms to the Ukrainian separatist rebels accused of shooting down the plane.

Although Fifa, football’s governing body, had ruled out calls from some German politicians for Russia to be boycotted, Mr Clegg told The Sunday Times that allowing it to proceed without a change of course by Russian President Vladimir Putin would make the world look “weak and so insincere” in its condemnation of Moscow.

“Vladimir Putin himself has to understand that he can’t have his cake and eat it,” the deputy prime minister told the newspaper. “You can’t have this – the beautiful game marred by the ugly aggression of Russia on the Russian-Ukrainian border.”

Downing Street conceded on Sunday that while the prime minister did not agree with “reach[ing] immediately for boycotts”, it was “not surprising” that Russia’s status as World Cup host was under scrutiny.” It shows the importance of Russia changing course, before its international standing is damaged even further,” a spokesman said.

Separately, it has been reported that lawyers from London law firm McCue & Partners have flown to Ukraine for discussions about how victims’ families could bring a class-action lawsuit against Mr Putin for Russia’s alleged role in the shooting down of the plane. The case will be pursued in the American courts, according to the Sunday Telegraph.