Boris Johnson's Ties to US Businesswoman Under Fire

The British press remains very much interested in a recent Boris Johnson controversy, but this one has nothing to do with Brexit. Instead, it involves an American tech entrepreneur named Jennifer Arcuri, reports Reuters. The British prime minister is under fire for not disclosing his personal relationship with Arcuri when he was mayor of London, a period when Arcuri secured public money and landed spots on foreign trade trips. The issue first surfaced in the Times of London. Arcuri, who founded a company called Innotech and whose latest venture is called Hacker House, appeared on ITV's Good Morning Britain on Monday and insisted that Johnson gave her no preferential treatment, reports the BBC. (See the interview here.)

"Boris never ever gave me favoritism, never once did I ask him for a favor, never once did he write a letter of recommendation for me," she said in the interview. Arcuri—previously named by Computer Weekly as one of the most influential women in tech in the UK—acknowledged that Johnson had visited her London flat multiple times but declined to go into specifics about whether they had an intimate relationship. "I really am not going to answer that question," Arcuri told ITV. "It’s really categorically no one’s business what private life we had or didn’t have." The Guardian reports that four separate government inquiries have been launched into whether Johnson, as mayor, gave Arcuri preferential treatment. (Separately, Johnson is fighting back over a groping accusation.)