US tech entrepreneur, Jennifer Arcuri has reportedly admitted having an affair with UK prime minister Boris Johnson after allegations that he used his position as London mayor to get the businesswoman favourable treatment.
Though the Prime Minister avoided a criminal investigation after the police watchdog found no evidence that he influenced the payment of thousands of pounds of public money to her or secured her participation in foreign trade trips he led, Daily Mail however reported that Arcuri admitted having an affair with Mr Johnson while he was with his then-wife Marina Wheeler.
She said in an interview;
“I think that goes without saying …It’s pretty much out there … But I’m not going to talk about it.”
In the interview in Kentucky where she is visiting family, she also discussed being bombarded by his “avalanches of passion”. When asked if she loved him, she is quoted saying;
“At the time I cared for him very deeply, but I never used the L word. I wouldn’t have recognised being in love. I cared very much about this man and I think that’s resolutely clear. That’s all I want to say.”
Jennifer Arcuri, is a former model turned entrepreneur in the tech world. She began her career as Radio Disney DJ Razzle Dazz at the Walt Disney Company.
She delved into filmmaking and produced and directed short film La Valise in 2008, which was part of the Short Film Showcase at the Cannes Film Festival. She launched a tech career in 2011 after moving to the UK. She is the founder of Playbox Ltd, a social network for the video tech industry, Innotech Network and Hacker House.
Arcuri is currently married to Matthew Hickey, the co-director of Hacker House, with whom she had a daughter in 2017.
The nature of her relationship to Boris became the subject of public scrutiny in 2019, after it emerged that she had benefited from thousands of pounds in public money, including from the mayor’s promotional agency, London and Partners (L&P).
She was also given coveted places on trade missions to New York and Tel Aviv alongside Johnson, despite failing to meet the criteria for those trips. Her place on the trips was allegedly secured after intervention from the then mayor’s office.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) decided against a criminal investigation, but its 112-page report did conclude that Johnson should have declared an interest, and that this failure could have amounted to a breach of the Greater London assembly’s code of conduct