THE TORIES have “serious questions to answer” over lavish donations to the party by the wife of a former Putin associate, Labour said today.

The Conservatives received £4.7 million in donations in the first three months of 2018, more than three times the £1.49m pulled in by Labour between January 1 and March 31, data from the Electoral Commission has revealed.

But £100,000 of the Tories’ total came from Lubov Chernukhin, whose husband Vladimir was Russia’s deputy finance minister during Vladimir Putin’s first term as president, before settling in London in 2006.