Boris Johnson will face formal investigation into apartment renovation costs

The UK’s Electoral Commission said in a statement Wednesday that there “are reasonable grounds to suspect that an offence or offences may have occurred. We will therefore continue this work as a formal investigation to establish whether this is the case.” Johnson has been under pressure to explain how he paid for the renovations to his apartment, which British news outlets have reported cost around £200,000 ($280,000). Prime Ministers are given £30,000 ($41,000) of public money a year to renovate the property during their term.The British leader faced further scrutiny after his former chief aide last week leveled accusations of unethical behavior. Dominic Cummings, who left his role as Johnson’s former chief adviser late last year after gaining a reputation as the driving force behind the Prime Minister’s Brexit policy and re-election, alleged in a blog post that Johnson planned to have Conservative Party donors pay for the upgrade. If that was the case, the loan would need to have been declared to the Electoral Commission. Political donations and loans are tightly controlled in the United Kingdom, with loans of more than £7,500 ($10,400) logged and publicly revealed by the commission four times a year. The commission added in its Wednesday statement that “the investigation will determine whether any transactions relating to the works at 11 Downing Street fall within the regime regulated by the Commission and whether such funding was reported as required.” The questions over who initially paid for the apartment upgrade have been dominating British media for days, and news that a formal investigation has been launched could spell further trouble for Johnson. The Prime Minister and his government are currently facing several accusations of unethical behavior, a war of words with Cummings and a potentially hugely damaging allegation that Johnson was happy to let people die to avoid putting England into a second pandemic lockdown.Conveniently for the opposition, the commission’s bombshell announcement came just before the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions session was set to begin in the Parliament, giving opposition leader Keir Starmer plenty of ammunition for the debate. Starmer jumped on the opportunity, repeatedly challenging Johnson on the issue. Johnson responded by saying, several times, that he paid for the works himself and in turn accused the Labour Party leader of playing political games at the time the country is dealing with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.A Number 10 spokesperson told CNN earlier in the week that the government has “transparently laid out the historic expenditure” and that “any costs of wider refurbishment … have been met by the Prime Minister personally.” CNN reached out to the PM’s office for comment Wednesday.The Prime Minister and his allies have robustly defended his behavior and strongly denied the allegations. Sarah Vine, a high-profile British journalist, and the wife of senior government minister Michael Gove, told the BBC’s flagship news radio show Wednesday that “the Prime Minister can’t be expected to live in a skip.”Local elections across the United Kingdom next week will be seen as a test of how much the scandal has resonated with the public.CNN’s Rob Picheta and Luke McGee contributed reporting.