LABOUR has accused Boris Johnson of being “wholly unfit to be Prime Minister” following claims the Tory leadership frontrunner attended a secretive dinner at a restaurant owned by party donors accused of money laundering.

And in another claim, the People’s Vote campaign said the former London Mayor had received a £20,000 donation from a former UKIP donor whose Mayfair club recently hosted a behind closed door meeting between Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage and a member of Johnson’s team.

BuzzFeedNews reported that in the spring Mr Johnson dined at Bella Cosa Italian restaurant in London’s Canary Wharf. It is owned by Lycamobile, the telecoms giant, which is facing a French probe into whether or not it laundered millions of euros through its sprawling offshore network. The company denies financial malpractice.

Mr Johnson is said to have met Subaskaran Allirajah, Lycamobile’s founder and chairman, as well as other company executives at Bella Cosa’s private upstairs dining area in order to get support for his burgeoning bid to become Tory leader.

The London MP received at least £10,000 in campaign donations from Lycamobile in support of his 2012 mayoral campaign.

Lycamobile was the Conservatives’ largest business donor when David Cameron was in Downing St, handing over more than two million pounds. However, the party last year announced it had stopped accepting money from the telecoms giant.

In response, John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, said: “Boris Johnson's association with a company being investigated for money laundering makes him wholly unfit to be Prime Minister."

Meanwhile, the People’s Vote campaign highlighted the connection between Mr Johnson and what it termed the “extreme Brexit project”.

It said the £20,000 donation was from Robin Birley, a former UKIP donor, who owns private members’ club 5 Hartford Street, the venue of a reported meeting between former Cabinet minister Priti Patel, a Johnson supporter said to be a member of his campaign team and Nigel Farage, businessman Arron Banks and the DUP MP Ian Paisley Jr.

Former Defence minister Guto Bebb, a leading Conservative supporter of a People’s Vote, said on behalf of the campaign: “This disclosure is further evidence of the bonds that get ever-tighter between Boris Johnson’s campaign and the extreme Brexit project championed by Nigel Farage and Arron Banks.

“There are some of my colleagues who still hope that a Prime Minister Johnson could still turn out to be the liberal pro-European figure he once appeared to be. But the likes of Mr Birley are investing in a very different candidate and we should all remember one of the rules of politics is to ‘follow the money’.”

The Johnson campaign was approached to comment on both claims but declined to do so.