Boris Johnson was aware there was a potential conflict of interest in his relationship with Jennifer Arcuri, the US businesswoman has claimed, on the eve of the publication of an inquiry into how she secured a £100,000 government grant.

In an interview for Bloomberg Businessweek, Arcuri also said that a senior official at the then London mayor’s promotional agency London & Partners (L&P) was renting a room in her Shoreditch live/work space in 2013. Around that time Johnson visited Arcuri in the property and the agency was sponsoring her events.

In a further embarrassment to the prime minister, Arcuri said Johnson was aware of her business links to the former city trader and Libor-rigger Tom Hayes.

But Arcuri again denied she was given any favouritism by Johnson or his agency and even claimed that at times she felt shut out because of her friendship with the mayor. She said: “He knew there was a potential for conflict, and this is why he never did anything.”

Her comments come as the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is due to publish a review of how it awarded Arcuri’s company, Hacker House, a £100,000 grant earlier this year under a scheme aimed at fostering UK cyberskills, amid questions over the company’s tenuous links to the UK.

Arcuri told Bloomberg that DCMS officials knew she was living abroad when she applied for the grant. She also revealed she was planning to apply for another £100,000 before her friendship with Johnson was revealed.

The culture secretary, Nicky Morgan, who promised to published a review of the grant by Thursday, has already denied that Johnson had any role in awarding the grant. Earlier this month MPs on the DCMS select committee called for a police investigation into Hacker House if the review finds that deception was involved in obtaining the grant.

Arcuri also told Bloomberg that Johnson was aware of her links with Hayes before he was convicted of rigging the Libor interest rate.

Arcuri, who went to business school with Hayes, was the co-director of his startup company Title X Technology. Arcuri told Bloomberg that she had told Johnson how upset she was at Hayes being prosecuted after his arrest in 2012. She recalls the then mayor saying: “Look Jennifer, the world is full of bad men, be careful.”

Despite those apparent words of disapproval, a presentation by Title X in May 2013 included an image of Johnson speaking at one of Arcuri’s events, the Guardian can reveal.

Johnson and Arcuri continued to meet each other until 2016. She listed Johnson on her phone as Alex the Great in reference to his real first name, Alexander.

In December 2012 she boasted to a friend that she was seeing “AtheGreat” for lunch. It is one of at least 20 encounters between the pair that the Guardian has evidence for, including the three trade missions and four occasions Johnson spoke at her events.

Johnson’s register of interests as mayor makes no mention of Arcuri or her companies and he insists he had no interest to declare and that everything was done with “full propriety”.

Despite failing to meet the criteria for inclusion, L&P gave Arcuri permission to go on two trade trips to Tel Aviv and New York with Johnson in 2015 after intervention from the mayor’s office. The agency also bent its own rules to allow her to attend a trade trip with Johnson to Singapore in 2014.

Arcuri admitted she was “very pushy” with L&P about requesting a place. But she expressed frustration that Johnson would not help her. “I was going insane with Boris. I was like, ‘Dude, what is your deal?’ … The mayor’s team made things very difficult. But I was just not going to take no for an answer. Why should I not get to go to Singapore because I was friends with Boris?”

L&P confirmed that one of its officials, Pru Ashby, rented a room in Arcuri’s flat for two months in 2013. But Allen Simpson, L&P’s strategy and corporate affairs director, said Ashby declared the interest and played no part in the agency’s decision to give Arcuri a place on trade missions or its awarding of £11,500 in sponsorship for two of her company’s events.

He said: “Pru Ashby knew Jennifer Arcuri socially. She made her managers aware of that fact and was not responsible for decisions to support Ms Arcuri’s businesses, which were taken by more senior leaders.”

The interview, part of a 4,650-word article on Arcuri, also revealed that she blagged her way into an expensive British Venture Capital Association summit when she first met Johnson as a business student in 2011. The encounter, which she has previously described as “electrifying” and which was caught on camera, only occurred after she made up a story about being the president of a venture capital club to avoid paying the entrance fee, Arcuri told Bloomberg.