British police announced Thursday the opening of an investigation after the complaint of an MP among a dozen men operating in the spheres of power targeted by seductive messages sometimes accompanied by explicit photos.
As the scandal grew in Westminster, a Conservative MP, William Wragg, admitted to the House on Thursday evening Times its responsibility in leaking the telephone numbers of the targeted people. The 36-year-old MP explained to the daily that he had given in to the demands of a user of a gay dating application to whom he had sent intimate photos. “I was worried because he had things on me,” he told the daily. “I hurt people by being weak”, “I was afraid”, “I am mortified”, declared the MP, who had previously announced that he would not run in the next elections, where the polls show the Labor opposition as the big winner.
A procedure
Among the victims listed by Politico, which revealed this affair, are three deputies – including a member of the government – two political journalists, a presenter, employees of political parties. THE Guardian identified a 13th target, a former government advisor.
Each time, everything started the same way: a certain “Abi”, or a certain “Charlie” contacted the target on WhatsApp, claiming to have met them during a political event, getting upset that the interlocutor did not respond. don’t remember, assures that they had nevertheless flirted, before in several cases, sending an explicit photo.
According to Times, two deputies sent an image of the same ilk back through the target. Politico, for its part, emphasizes that the messages reflected knowledge of numerous personal details of the intended targets.
Criminals or a State hostile to the maneuver?
Contacted by AFP, Leicestershire Police confirmed on Thursday that they were investigating “malicious communications after a number of unsolicited messages were sent to an MP” in this region of central England “on last month “. The facts were reported to the police on March 19 and “investigations are continuing”, according to the police.
According to Politico, the MP in question responded briefly before blocking the number when he realized he did not know the person contacting him.
If some deputies raised the hypothesis of a maneuver coming from a hostile State, experts contacted by the site lean more towards the work of criminals seeking to obtain compromising elements.