This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Boris Johnson stonewalled repeated questions about a conflict of interest row over his grants of public money to an American businesswoman on Monday as more details emerged about the nature of their friendship.

The British prime minister is under mounting pressure over revelations that Jennifer Arcuri’s business, Innotech, banked £26,500 in public money and the model-turned-tech entrepreneur attended three overseas trade missions led by him when he was London mayor.

A second firm she is director of, Hacker House, received a further £100,000 this year from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), but now the department is investigating whether the business was eligible for grant.

A DCMS spokesman said: “We regularly monitor grant initiatives and treat any allegations of impropriety with the utmost seriousness.”

Johnson, who refused six times to answer questions from reporters on a plane to New York for a UN summit, denied wrongdoing but refused to elaborate on his friendship with Arcuri during later broadcast interviews in the US on Monday.

Nevertheless, the Guardian can reveal that:

A tech CEO who attended a trade mission to Israel with the pair said Arcuri openly told delegates she was friends with Johnson. A second delegate who attended the trip said Arcuri, who was initially rejected from attending by organisers, was “out of place” on the visit.

Arcuri leapt to Johnson’s defence on Twitter after he had been quizzed on TV about lying in relation to an extra-marital affair saying it was “personal” business and that he was an “amazing leader”.

A London assembly member who sat on City Hall’s finance committee during Johnson’s mayoralty raised the prospect of an inquiry about the grants.

Johnson has yet to explain his friendship with 34-year-old Arcuri after the Sunday Times revealed that he failed to declare a series of potential conflicts of interest.

Boris Johnson urged to justify 'awarding public funds to close friend' Read more

Asked about the claims, Johnson told the BBC: “All I can say is I’m very proud of what we did when I was mayor of London, very proud of everything that we did, particularly banging the drum for our city and country around the world.”

He added: “And I can tell you absolutely that everything was done entirely in the proper way.”

In a subsequent interview with Sky News, Johnson was pressed on the claims he faced a potential conflict of interest but he again declined to engage with the question, saying only that as mayor he had been “beating the drum” for London.

It comes after “ethical hacker” Arcuri – who first met the politician when she joined his 2012 mayoral campaign after moving to the UK – was reportedly handed a total of £126,000 in public money.

Johnson, 55, who was the capital’s mayor between 2008 and 2016, was reportedly a regular visitor to Arcuri’s east London flat. Arcuri, who was then in her late 20s, described Johnson as “one of her best friends”.

Johnson appeared at four events for Arcuri’s Innotech, a firm which organises summits for young technology entrepreneurs based in east London’s Silicon Roundabout.

In October 2013, Innotech received a £10,000 grant from London & Partners (L&P), a promotional group which Johnson was responsible for as mayor. L&P paid Innotech a further £1,500 to sponsor an event in the House of Commons the following summer. The group said the money given to Arcuri’s firm was “not a grant but a commercial sponsorship” and denied Johnson had involvement.

Arcuri received a separate £15,000 government grant. She relocated back to America last June but her latest company, Hacker House, won a £100,000 cyber skills grant from DCMS earlier this year.

Arcuri was rejected after applying to join two trade trips to New York and Tel Aviv but went anyway after Johnson’s office lobbied on her behalf. She attended a third trip led by Johnson to Singapore and Malaysia.

She was also added to the Tel Aviv trip in November 2015 at the eleventh hour at the request of Johnson’s team. Aldo de Pape, founder and CEO of TeachPitch, a web-based learning platform that helps teachers and schools identify the best online resources available, said Arcuri told fellow delegates she was friends with Johnson.

“She was nice, she was friendly, she was quite open about her personal relationship with Johnson. She said she was friends with him. She didn’t imply anything romantic,” he said, but added Johnson should explain his relationship with Arcuri.

Another delegate, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “She was the odd one out. I just remember thinking there’s a bunch of tech people here and then there’s you.”

Arcuri did not respond to requests for comment. She previously told the Sunday Times: “Any grants received by my companies and any trade mission I joined were purely in respect of my role as a legitimate businesswoman.”