Men accused of being asked to set fires at Starmer-linked London homes
A British prosecutor told a jury that three men accused of arson were recruited through an online messaging contact and were promised payment to set fires last year at properties prosecutors said were linked to U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson told the court on Wednesday that the alleged recruitment involved a Russian-speaking contact who made offers through the Telegram app.
Atkinson said the men were Ukrainian nationals Roman Lavrynovych, 22, and Petro Pochynok, 35, and Stanislav Carpiuc, 27, a Romanian citizen. He told the jury that they were involved in setting blazes in London between May 8 and May 12 and are accused of conspiracy to commit arson.
Atkinson said Lavrynovych was identified by police as the person behind all the fires, and that he is also charged with damaging two properties by fire with intent to endanger life or being reckless as to whether life was endangered. Atkinson said the defendants deny the charges and that the court was not told how much money was offered or whether anyone was injured in the fires.
The prosecutor described three incidents in the same area within a five-day span, starting with a Toyota car deliberately set ablaze in the early hours of May 8 in the Kentish Town area of north London. He said a house fire followed on May 11, and a second house fire followed on May 12, with prosecutors arguing the pattern was not coincidental.
Atkinson said the fires were started with similar materials and “were set in the dead of night, when the occupants of the addresses would inevitably have been asleep.” He told the jury that prosecutors argued the people who set the fires must have intended to endanger the lives of the people inside the homes.
Atkinson said prosecutors told the jury the targeted properties were linked to Starmer through their ownership and management history. He said the car had once belonged to Starmer, the first house on Ellington Road had been managed by a company where the prime minister had once been a director and shareholder, and the second house on Countess Road was occupied by Starmer’s sister-in-law and still owned by Starmer.
In describing the impact on residents, Atkinson said on May 11 the occupant of the top-floor apartment in one of the affected homes was awakened around 3 a.m. by the smell of smoke and later found the communal hallways full of smoke, had trouble breathing, and retreated to the roof. He said that a day later, on May 12, Starmer’s sister-in-law heard loud bangs and saw billowing smoke filling the stairs through the front door around 1 a.m., and said she struggled to breathe while her 9-year-old daughter was “very frightened.”
Atkinson also told the jury it did not need to decide what motivated the defendants to carry out the alleged attacks, saying 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.” He said the attacks against the car and houses were “planned and directed,” with those involved promised payment for participating.
Atkinson said Lavrynovych was offered payment by a contact using the name “El Money” on Telegram, and he said prosecutors recovered more than 320 messages dating back to September 2024 between Lavrynovych and the Telegram contact. He told the jury that the messages were not to concern them with who “El Money” was or why the contact decided to recruit people for the attacks.