Its name means "the awakening of the senses". And with its fine Alsace food and excellent wine, the L'Éveil des Sens restaurant in Strasbourg was the perfect place for a political meeting.
Four times a year members of the Council of Europe's liberal group gathered here on a Sunday evening to relax amid the frescoes and to discuss private business. Among their number was Mike Hancock, the flamboyant rebel Liberal Democrat MP from Portsmouth South. But while other delegates from the council's parliamentary assembly turned up alone, Hancock typically appeared with a glamorous young Russian woman, colleagues said. Sometimes he even brought two.
"They were all the same type: long-legged, good-looking blondes, never older than 25, fluent in French, English and often German, and with a higher education," Mátyás Eörsi, the former head of the European liberal group, which includes Nick Clegg's Lib Dems, said today.
"I've been in Strasbourg since 2004. I remember at least five of Mike's Russian female assistants," said another group member, who declined to be named.
Hancock's ties with Russia first came under the spotlight in August after MI5 interrogated his Russian House of Commons assistant Katia Zatuliveter, 25, over her alleged links with Russia's secret intelligence agencies. It emerged she is to be deported from Britain after MI5 decided she was secretly working for Russia's intelligence services as a sleeper. Hancock has previously dismissed the spying allegations as "absolute rubbish".
Hancock, 64, was arrested in October on suspicion of indecent assault following allegations of improper behaviour towards a female constituent. Hancock denies wrongdoing. He said on his website that he had gone voluntarily to a police station and "co-operated fully" with police inquiries. He was bailed until January.
Former colleagues said they had raised serious concerns about the activities of Hancock's young Russian companions. They said they witnessed the alleged assistants using the computers of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (Alde), the liberal group secretariat, which were supposed to be protected by a password.
"They knew the password. We had no idea what they were doing with the information. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps something," Eörsi said, adding: "I saw this myself." The computers allowed access to everything on the Council of Europe's central server.
Two months ago, Hancock confirmed Zatuliveter "was in the middle of getting another job", adding that he was recruiting a replacement. He told the Guardian he had taken young women to Alde dinners "half a dozen times" over 13 years. "They certainly weren't assistants of mine. They were people doing internships at the Council of Europe, or something like that," he said, adding that there had only ever been "one Russian" as well as a Romanian and Ukrainian. Zatuliveter was his only salaried employee, he said.
Colleagues, however, said they had objected to the presence of Hancock's Russian companions, who overheard confidential discussions. During Alde's meeting in June, one Ukrainian MP, Serhiy Holovaty, said he had protested openly.
Holovaty, a former justice minister, said he had asked for a ban on Hancock's Russian "assistants" from future meetings, adding that he was convinced they had "links" to Russia's FSB spy agency.
Scotland Yard believes the FSB was involved in the murder of the London-based Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko by polonium poisoning in 2006.
"I openly protested against the presence of Mike's new 'assistant-spy'. My demand was to put a ban on the exceptional 'right' of Mike to bring every time to our meetings a new person of this type," Holovaty told colleagues. He added: "I explained to them that all these girls ...were connected with the KGB-FSB."
Eörsi, who led Alde between 2002-2009, said he was so concerned about Hancock's pro-Kremlin voting record in the Council of Europe that he had raised the matter with Charles Kennedy, the then Lib Dem leader, warning him of a "scandal".
"Hancock was surrounded by very young, very beautiful, very attractive Russian and Ukrainian girls. I don't exclude that these girls had a double mandate," Eörsi told the Guardian.
According to Eörsi, Hancock effectively acted as a Kremlin lobbyist, voting with the Russian delegation and even co-authoring pro-Kremlin amendments. Hancock had also failed to declare all of his frequent trips to Russia, Eörsi claimed, adding that it was odd that a British MP who sat on the Commons defence committee and was involved in defence issues in Europe, was "always surrounded by Russians".
Hancock denied the allegations. He confirmed he had travelled to Russia in 2008 and 2009, but said he was unable to remember exactly how many trips he had made over the last 10 years.
"All my trips were of an official nature," he said. He said he "hadn't a clue" about the precise number of his trips to Moscow because: "My passport fell in the sea. It got wet. It was in the early part of the year. "I'm getting a new one," he explained.
Chris Bryant, the former Labour minister for Europe, said he and other MPs were also alarmed by Hancock's apparent unwavering support for Vladimir Putin's authoritarian regime.
"Hancock has entirely bought into the Russian state viewpoint," Bryant claimed. He said MPs on the all-party Russia group were so unhappy with Hancock's pro-Putin views they ousted him as the group's chair in June. Bryant, now shadow minister for Russia, replaced him.
Bryant said Zatuliveter was "visibly devastated" by the all-party vote sacking Hancock as chair. He added: "I couldn't understand why an MP from somewhere in the south-west had a Russian researcher. She was really only interested in doing Russia stuff. She seemed slightly odd. Since becoming chair I have lots of offers from people with vested interests, all of which I've eschewed."
Colleagues in Strasbourg said they were also "puzzled" by Hancock's support for the Kremlin. "You could always see him in the lounge and corridor having friendly conversations with the Russians. It was pretty weird," one source said. (The Russians are formally in an alliance with the Tories in the parliamentary assembly, not the liberals.) On another occasion he said Hancock harangued the Russian opposition leader Grigory Yavlinsky, during a formal meeting and at Alde's Sunday evening get-together. "Mike was very rude to him."
Speaking to the Guardian, Hancock retorted: "He [Yavlinsky] was talking complete tosh. He went on for over an hour."
He denied his restaurant companions had access to the Alde bureau's computers and said it was ridiculous to suggest they were Russian spies. "Who the hell could be interested in what the Lib Dem delegation was doing and what we were thinking?" he asked. "It's absolute nonsense."
Colleagues also said they were bemused by Hancock's boasting about his lifestyle in Strasbourg, which allegedly included shopping trips with his Russian assistants. "Mike was proud of his family's [humble] roots. His father was a sailor and his grand-father was also a sailor who died at Scapa Flow," said one. Hancock had shown him photographs of his home and his vintage "Stanley steam-car", he said. The Lib Dem MP also drove other expensive cars, including a Volvo XC90 and a "huge" three-litre Chrysler, he said.
Hancock confirmed he owned a Volvo, a Chrysler and an Audi-4, saying, however: "I bought and paid for them myself." He said he had a part share in a vintage car "20 years ago". Of the shopping trips he said: "The only shopping I did was to buy wine to take back to England."
Hancock did not attend this autumn's Lib Dem conference, but he wrote to Clegg, the deputy prime minister, asking him to "end the dictatorship" of his ministers over the party. He also accused Clegg of "abandoning a key aspect of Lib Dem policy" by supporting welfare cuts. His comments appear to position him as the Lib Dems' leading media troublemaker.
The Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly is the only forum where representatives from western European and former Soviet bloc countries get to debate together. The 100-strong Alde group last met in October. Its secretary, Peter Kallenberger, refused to discuss spying allegations against Hancock's Westminster and Strasbourg assistants.
Russian delegates frequently use the assembly to reject western criticism – often witheringly – of Russia's "managed democracy", its human rights record, and its military occupation of territory belonging to Georgia, another assembly member.
Hancock says he has criticised the Kremlin over Chechnya, but supports Russia's leadership on other issues, and is less close to its government than his Tory colleagues in Europe.
According to the Sunday Times, MI5 interrogated Zatuliveter on 8 August at Gatwick airport, after she and a friend flew back from a holiday in Croatia. "They had our names, so they probably were listening to our phones," the paper reported the friend as saying.
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