On Friday the Home Office said it had deported Stanislav Carpiuc, 28, a Romanian national born in Ukraine, after his conviction in the arson case tied to former prime minister Keir Starmer. The department did not say where he was sent. Anyone deported from the UK is, as a rule, barred from coming back. Carpiuc had been arrested, during the inquiry, at Luton Airport.

He did not light the fires. At the Old Bailey, Carpiuc was found guilty of conspiring with Roman Lavrynovych and “with others” to damage property by fire between 1 April and 13 May 2025. He was jailed for two years in June. Lavrynovych, a 22-year-old Ukrainian builder, set the blazes: seven years, including for being reckless as to whether life was endangered. The gap in the sentences tracks the gap in the roles.

The attacks began on 8 May 2025, while Starmer was still prime minister. A Toyota RAV4 he had once owned was found burning on a street in Kentish Town, where he used to live. On 11 May a fire was found at flats in nearby Islington linked to him. The next morning the former Kentish Town home, rented to his sister-in-law Judith Alexander, was hit. She told the trial she heard two bangs, saw an orange glow at the front door and black smoke on the stairs; her partner and daughter were in the house.

The trial described a Russian-speaking Telegram contact, El Money or EL, who offered Lavrynovych £3,000 in cryptocurrency if the fires were filmed and made the news. Carpiuc’s job, the defence said, was to turn the crypto into cash. His barrister called him “the money man”: the motive, counsel argued, was to help a friend who needed money for his father’s treatment; Carpiuc himself was not going to take a cut. The court convicted him of conspiracy all the same, not of those excuses.

A Home Office spokesperson called the attack “abhorrent”. The convictions, the statement said, should send a clear message to anyone blinded by money from strangers: you will be caught and you will pay. The BBC has reported separately that its own investigation ties the series to a wider sabotage effort that, in the newsroom’s reading, leads to the Russian state; EL allegedly offered Russian citizenship for other attacks and glorified Vladimir Putin. Those are journalistic conclusions, not the court’s verdict.

Starmer is no longer prime minister. The houses hit were not, at the time of the fires, the Downing Street residence, but north London properties linked to him. Deportation takes Carpiuc out of the country. It does not reopen the trial, and it does not say, officially, who EL was.

Image: Bill Henderson, the Old Bailey (Central Criminal Court), 28 September 2018, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The photograph shows the court, not a burned house.

Sources consulted: UK deports Romanian convicted of arson at ex-PM Starmer’s homes — South China Morning Post; Man jailed for Starmer-linked arson attacks deported, Home Office says — BBC; Arson plotter jailed for targeting Keir Starmer’s house is deported from UK — The Independent.