Katia Zatuliveter Is Ready For Lad’s Mag Photoshoot: Mike Handycock Is Innocent
DAY 2 of Katia Zatuliveter’s appeal against deportation to Mother Russia. Did she shag married LibDem MP Mike Hancock for his secrets?
Hancock yesterday quit the Commons Defence Committee. He says he never passed on classified information to his researcher Katia.
The court called a female MI5 officer known as witness ZZ. She sat behind a curtain. No, not an iron one, rather one made of cotton.
She is challenged by Tim Owen QC, for Miss Zatuliveter. The name of Anna Chapman arises:
ZZ: “The security services case is there are similarities but not by any means the same.”
Owen: “The difference is the FBI has got some evidence. Yes?”
ZZ: “I’m unable to disclose what is in the closed case, but there is a closed case.”
Owen: “Your decision to become interested in Miss Zatuliveter in 2010 was entirely because of Anna Chapman, wasn’t it?”
ZZ: “To ordinary members of the public, to someone who meets Miss Chapman or Miss Zatuliveter in public, it wouldn’t be obvious they were working for the Russian Intelligence services.”
Owen: “Are you saying this woman was able to co-exist for four years in a relationship with Mike Hancock, genuinely loving him…but all the time acting in secret with the Russian Intelligence Service?”
ZZ: “I’m afraid I’ve gone as far as I can in open [session] on this question.”
…
Owen: “Your case is that because he is pro-Russian and because of his vulnerable private life this would have made him ripe for some kind of honey trap.”
ZZ : “He would have been marked out as a good target.”
…
ZZ: “To someone who meets Miss Chapman or Miss Zatuliveter in public, it wouldn’t be obvious they were working for the Russian Intelligence Services. They weren’t the same kind of agents.”
So. MI5 know all about the dangers. They must have kept a close eye on the pair, right?
Allison Pearson: “Portsmouth, he purred, and knew she was his”
Just what was it about 65-year-old MP Mike Hancock that attracted 26-year-old blonde Russian Ekaterina “Katia” Zatuliveter? Was it the baby-fine, comb-over silver thatch and the shaggy beard? [His] Was it his membership of the Lib Dems, the most sensual and erotically charged of all political parties? Was it his choice of characterful neckwear? Was it Mike’s whispered promises of a night in Portsmouth South, his beloved constituency?
It must have been one of these because, as Miss Zatuliveter has told a tribunal, she had no interest whatsoever in Mr Hancock’s membership of the Commons’ defence select committee when she began a four-year affair with him.
The Mail looks at Hancock’s form:
In the late Nineties, he advised a pretty 25-year-old Russian named Ekaterina Paderina when her marriage to a 54-year-old retired British merchant seaman collapsed and she feared deportation from the UK. She went on to marry a wealthy British businessman in 2001.
The emergence of another attractive young Russian in Hancock’s circle was little surprise to the MP’s colleagues. Three who shared Defence Select Committee overseas visits with him revealed that his antics were a ‘running joke’ among MPs. One MP claimed that on a tour of the Ukraine a decade ago, he saw a young woman visit Hancock’s hotel room late at night.
Another said that Hancock boasted over breakfast that he had ‘hired a stenographer’ for ‘secretarial work’ in the small hours of the morning. A third claimed he was regularly seen in the company of young women and would take them to dinner at expensive restaurants while fellow MPs dined elsewhere.
But, as those closely observing Hancock’s life would know all too well, there is something familiar about such behaviour. During the mid-Nineties, his extra-marital affairs with two political colleagues — his constituency secretary Daphne Sparshatt and Lib Dem councillor Liz McCann, a married mother of three — became public.
As a result, political colleagues in Portsmouth took to referring to him as ‘Handyc**k’.
Sheesh! What kind of a world is it when a sixty-something married MP on the Commons Defence Committee can’t shag a much younger women he met on a mission to Moscow?
The case continues.
Posted: 20th, October 2011 | In: Politicians Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink
