Boris Johnson ‘dropped pole-dancing friend Jennifer Arcuri like a stone’

Boris Johnson allegedly dropped his pole-dancing friend Jennifer Arcuri ‘like a stone’ after discovering she had defended a City trader who was later jailed after pocketing millions by rigging Libor rates. 

The Prime Minister has faced intense scrutiny in recent days after it emerged he signed off some £126,000 to former model and businesswoman Ms Arcuri during his tenure as Mayor of London.

American Ms Arcuri, 34, received around £126,000 in four government grants for her cyber security firms.

Now it has been revealed Mr Johnson allegedly ‘dropped her like a stone’ after learning she had defended disgraced City trader Tom Hayes, before he was jailed for 14 years in 2015 for conspiring to fix rates for profit. 

Miss Arcuri became friends with the then-Mayor of London in 2013 when she was living in London with Mr Johnson becoming a regular visitor to her apartment in the capital

Hayes was the ‘ringmaster’ of a group who ‘cajoled’ rate setters at other banks into submitting false data to manipulate the London interbank offered rate (Libor) between 2006 and 2010. 

In 2013 Ms Arcuri, described by the Wall Street Journal as a close friend of Mr Hayes, defended him saying she believed he was ‘innocent’. 

Tom Hayes (pictured outside Southwark Crown Court in 2015), was jailed for 14 years after conspiring to fix rates for profit

She told the newspaper: ‘[Trying to rig Libor] was common practice … like spanking children in the 70s. It wasn’t bad.’ 

A source told The Mirror: ‘When [Boris] learned of her defence of Tom is was a scandal too far. She was dropped like a stone.

‘Jennifer defended Tom before he was convicted, believing he was innocent at the time.’

Ms Arcuri is said to have denied she had a relationship with the former London mayor, who was a frequent visitor to her apartment in Shoreditch, east London, where she had installed a dancing pole. 

Mr Johnson has refused to answer questions over this relationship with Arcuri – insisting only that funds handed out while he was mayor were awarded with ‘utter propriety’. 

Hayes worked for Royal Bank of Scotland and Royal Bank of Canada before joining UBS in 2006 as a trader in Tokyo.

He was paid £1.3 million before tax in salary and incentives by UBS from September 2006 to December 2009.

He joined Citi in 2009 after he ‘felt that UBS were not paying him enough’, and received £3.5 million before tax for just nine months’ work. 

A trader in yen Libor derivatives, he effectively bet on movements of the daily rate at which banks are able to borrow from each other. He rigged the submissions made by the panel banks, used to calculate that rate. 

Ms Arcuri reportedly met Mr Johnson, some 21 years her senior, when she volunteered on his re-election campaign in 2013 and in turn, he supported her business venture, according to a source

The married father-of-one was diagnosed with a mild form of Asperger’s syndrome and had a self-confessed ‘obsessive’ personality.

He was mocked by fellow traders and nicknamed ‘Rain Man’ after the autistic character in the 1988 Hollywood film starring Dustin Hoffman. 

Hayes was sacked after his methods were formally reported to senior management and he was arrested in the UK in December 2012. 

He was found guilty on all eight counts of conspiracy to defraud by manipulating the global system of interest rates.