Jennifer Arcuri to discuss Boris Johnson friendship in live GMB TV interview

American businesswoman to face questions over ties to prime minister

Peter Stubley
Sunday 06 October 2019 16:14 BST
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Boris Johnson repeatedly refuses to deny affair with ex-model Jennifer Arcuri

Jennifer Arcuri is set to reveal the extent of her relationship with Boris Johnson in a live TV interview.

The US businesswoman, who is alleged to have received preferential treatment from Mr Johnson while he was Mayor of London, is due to appear on ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Monday.

Piers Morgan, who co-hosts the show with Susanna Reid, announced the interview on Twitter without revealing what questions she would be asked.

“Jennifer Arcuri, Boris Johnson’s ‘technology advisor’, will give her first world exclusive TV interview to GMB live tomorrow morning,” he wrote, before inviting the prime minister to appear on the show as well at 8am.

Ms Arcuri is alleged to have had an affair with Mr Johnson while she was seeking to establish herself as a technology entrepreneur.

Her companies have received a total of £126,000 of public money, including £10,000 in sponsorship cash from an organisation Mr Johnson was responsible for as London mayor in 2013, according to a Sunday Times investigation.

He attended several events promoting her company, wrote her a reference for a job as chief executive of a government-funded tech firm, and allowed her to join his overseas trade missions, it is claimed.

However Ms Arcuri has denied having an affair, claiming that he only visited her east London flat for assistance with IT problems.

“The reason why Boris would stopover was because of the clusterf*** of emails,” she told The Mirror. “And he was like, ‘Jen, what the f***’s a Google hangout? Where are you at three o’clock, I can, you know, stop over. You can tell me what the hell is going on. That’s what, that’s what it is.”

On Friday she said her relationship with Mr Johnson was “nobody’s business”, telling Bloomberg: “I will not be the person to bring Boris Johnson down.”

The prime minister is facing a possible investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct into whether he breached laws on misconduct in public office and the London Assembly has asked for details of his relationship with Ms Arcuri to establish whether there was a potential conflict of interest.

A Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport investigation is under way into a £100,000 grant made to a company run by Ms Arcuri.

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