UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been fined by police for allegedly holding alcohol-fueled COVID lockdown parties in a scandal known as "Partygate."
Johnson is accused of holding various get-togethers -- including "bring your own booze" parties and "wine time Fridays" -- in government offices in 2020 and 2021, during a time when Britain was under strict COVID-19 lockdown rules, NPR reported.
As Johnson and his pals were allegedly living it up and breaking coronavirus laws, in once case celebrating his 56th birthday, millions of Britons were under restrictions that forced them to stay at home and away from friends and loved ones.
On Tuesday, London Metropolitan Police said they were issuing fines in connection with "Partygate," including Johnson and Treasury chief Rishi Sunak. The amount of the fines has not been made public.
"The Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer have today received notification that the Metropolitan police intend to issue them with fixed penalty notices," a spokesperson for Johnson's office said in a statement Tuesday, according to NPR. "We have no further details."
Johnson issued an apology, saying he initially didn't realize any rules were being broken. In relation to the "brief gathering" for his birthday, he said it lasted less than 10 minutes while his colleagues passed on good wishes.
"I have to say in all frankness at that time it did not occur to me that this might have been a breach of the rules," he said, according to The Washington Post. "But of course the police have found otherwise and I fully respect the outcome of their investigation."
The situation leaves Johnson as the first sitting prime minister in living memory found to have broken the law, CNBC reported. It has also led to calls for his resignation, with opposition parties and a coalition of families who lost loved ones to COVID accusing the prime minister of lying to the public.
"It's still unbelievably painful to know the prime minister was partying and breaking his own lockdown rules while we were unable to be at our loved ones' sides in their dying moments, or in miserable funerals with only a handful of people because we were following the rules," Lobby Akinnola, spokesperson for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, said in a statement. "They broke the law. But even worse, they took us all for mugs."
Johnson has rejected any calls to step down and has support from nearly all cabinet ministers, the BBC reported.
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