Three arson attacks on two houses and a car linked to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer were carried out on the orders of a mysterious figure known as “El Money,” who communicated in Russian, prosecutors have told a London court.
Three men—two Ukrainian nationals and a Ukraine-born Romanian—appeared on April 29 at the Central Criminal Court, better known as the Old Bailey, after being accused of taking part in the attacks, which took place over five days in May 2025.
Ukrainian Roman Lavrynovych, 22, is charged with arson with intent to endanger life or being reckless as to whether life would be endangered.
Ukrainian Petro Pochynok, 35, and Romanian national Stanislav Carpiuc, 27, are accused of conspiracy to commit arson. All three deny the charges.
Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson told the jury that detectives identified Lavrynovych, 22, as being the man who set fire to a Toyota RAV4 car in Kentish Town, north London, on May 8, 2025; to the front door of a house in nearby Ellington Street in the early hours of May 11; and to another house in Countess Road the following night.
Jury Told to Ignore Motive
Atkinson said Lavrynovych had been contacted through the messaging app Telegram and offered money to set the fires by an individual referred to only as “El Money.”
“It is no part of your considerations to decide who ‘El Money’ is and what reason he might have had to co-ordinate the actions of these defendants against these properties and this car associated with the prime minister,” Atkinson told the jury.
“That is because you do not have to decide what motivated these three defendants. They have not demonstrated any particular political or ideological motivation, as opposed to a financial one. It does not matter whether they knew that the property they were targeting was connected to the prime minister or whether that formed part of their motivation.”
Atkinson said that on each occasion, the fire brigade was alerted and extinguished the flames before anyone was hurt, noting that the “fires were set in the dead of night, when the occupants of the addresses would inevitably have been asleep.”
Atkinson said Carpiuc had recruited Pochynok to help Lavrynovych with the first fire, and that Carpiuc also did the planning and received payment.
“Police recovered contact on the Telegram messaging app between Lavrynovych and ‘El Money,’ which showed that Lavrynovych had been recruited, instructed, and promised with payment for the fires that he was told to start,” Atkinson said.
The prosecutor said they also discovered messages between Carpiuc and El Money on Telegram, and he said El Money always communicated in Russian, whereas the three defendants used Ukrainian.
Atkinson said three fires in the same small area in five days would be unusual, but the fact that they all involved property linked to Starmer was beyond coincidence.
He said Starmer had once owned the Toyota, that the house in Ellington Street was managed by a company of which the prime minister had once been a director and shareholder, and that the other house was still owned by him and occupied by his sister-in-law.
The trial is still ongoing.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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