Conservative Party chairman Greg Hands has said he believes a Russian spy tried to recruit him over a pint of beer in a London pub. The Cabinet minister said he met Alexander Kashitsyn – who he now thinks was a secret agent – at the Seven Stars pub in Fulham while he had been seeking election as Tory MP for the area almost 20 years ago.
Mr Hands, who was elected MP for Chelsea and Fulham in 2010, claimed Mr Kashitsyn had first introduced himself as a Russian Embassy worker during a Conservative event in 2004 at which Boris Johnson was a guest speaker. He said Mr Kashitsyn asked for a meeting shortly afterwards and, at the pub, probed Mr Hands for information about Iran’s nuclear programme.
Speaking with Channel 4 for a Dispatches documentary, Mr Hands said: “First he’d said he wanted to talk about street-sweeping cleaning or bin collection. Then suddenly he asked me to get him a document about the Iranian nuclear programme from the House of Commons Library.”
