JUNE 30, 2017 by: Cynthia O’Murchu and Henry
Mance
On the first anniversary of Britain’s vote to leave the EU, Nigel Farage put on his Union Jack shoes to attend a party at a stately home near Bristol. The owner of the house, Old Down Manor, is Arron Banks, a 51-year-old insurance entrepreneur who has emerged as Britain’s most prominent political donor, claiming that he invested nearly £9m in the run-up to the Brexit vote.
His guests drank champagne and cheered a replay of the television coverage of referendum night.
One Ukipper called him “King Arron”, while copies of his book The Bad Boys of Brexit were laid at each table setting. Mr Banks has promised to continue to shake up British politics, but a year after the vote, the extent of his wealth and his political intentions is unclear.
Even Old Down Manor is not all that might seem. It is not Mr Banks’ home; he runs it as a wedding venue, living in a modest farmhouse nearby. Old Down Manor Ltd, the holding company, had net liabilities in the most recent set of annual accounts available.
In 2015, Mr Banks told the FT that he was worth around £100m. This year he appeared on the Sunday Times Rich List for the first time, with an estimated net worth of £250m — much of it riding on the then expected planned flotation of Eldon, one of his insurance companies. But public filings covering Mr Banks’ business interests show the use of a range of accounting techniques that mask the value of his investments.
He is a shareholder in at least 20 UK registered companies according to Orbis, a company database. Almost all of their parent companies are offshore in the Isle of Man, Gibraltar and the British Virgin Islands, affording them privacy.
His interests worldwide include insurance, banking, diamond mining and political consultancy. “I started my business with a desk and two phones, and built it from nothing. I earned and created every penny I made,” he said earlier this year.
Mr Banks built Group Direct, a motor insurer, from a small office above a bakery in Thornbury, Gloucestershire. In 2008, this business reversed into Brightside Group, which was listed on London’s Alternative Investment Market.
Mr. Banks and his wife say they made £10m from selling their shares in Brightside. He left in 2012, after a quarrel with his cofounders and two years after that, the company was sold to AnaCap, the private equity group, and became heavily lossmaking.
AnaCap has since sued its auditors, alleging “serious and widespread” failings at Brightside, including during Mr Banks’ tenure, though he is not a target of the suit.
In 2010 and 2011, Brightside paid Southern Rock Insurance — the Gibraltarbased underwriter in which Mr Banks is a major shareholder — £17m for a software platform and £32.4m for rights to distribute and sell motor insurance. But despite these sales, Southern Rock lost nearly £9m that year and by 2011 it was technically insolvent, without enough reserves to cover potential payouts.
The Gibraltar financial regulator ordered its directors to recapitalise the company. In the following years Mr Banks and his co-shareholders pumped money into Southern Rock and accepted a “period of ban or self-exclusion from other insurance directorships”. Mr Banks resigned as director of Eldon Insurance in Sept 2013 and Southern Rock in 2014.
Business remained difficult. Between 2010 and 2015, Southern Rock made multimillion losses on its core business in four of the six years.
In 2015, the most recent accounts available, Southern Rock posted a loss of nearly £28m on its core business. But it turned an overall profit by selling policy renewal rights for £73m to ICS Risk Solutions, an Isle of Man company that is majority owned by Mr Banks.
This allowed Southern Rock to book upfront profits from future earnings. I started my business with a desk and two phones, and built it from nothing. I earned and created every penny I made Mr Banks told the FT that Southern Rock was a “profitable, sustainable business in good standing” and that its finances could not easily be compared with other underwriting businesses because it also sold financial products.
Southern Rock had sold policy rights in order to meet solvency rules, he added. In the UK, Mr Banks’ insurance group’s main businesses — Eldon Insurance and Rock Services — work closely with Southern Rock, as extensive related-party disclosures show.
A page from Rock Services Ltd’s 2015 accounts showing ‘related party’ disclosures Eldon operates the motor insurance brand GoSkippy, and prominently advertises on the website of Leave.EU, Mr Banks’ pro- Brexit campaign group.
The company’s profitability is difficult to assess because of its high administrative expenses, which closely track turnover.
In 2015, it achieved a profit of just £284,000 on a turnover of £33.6m while paying £33.4m in administrative expenses. It received a £3,000 UK tax credit.
A page from Eldon’s 2015 accounts.
The company’s profitability is difficult to assess because of its high administrative expenses, which closely track turnover In the same year, it sold £25.7m of services to Southern Rock Insurance in Gibraltar and bought £27.5m of services from Rock Services, a UK company, of which Mr Banks is a director.
Through his lawyers, Mr Banks said a £250m valuation of Eldon Insurance was “speculative”, but that it could be justified because Eldon’s earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation were forecast internally to rise to £20m.
He also said that there were no plans to float Eldon Insurance Services, although he subsequently told the FT that a flotation could take place “maybe next year”.
The FT has contacted Mr Banks’ holding companies in the Isle of Man, to obtain its annual accounts, but had not had a response at the time of publication.
Mr Banks has diversified his holdings. Over the years he built stakes in an offshore bank, a provider of trustees to high net worth individuals, and — through Southern Rock Insurance — even uranium mining in Niger.
More recently, he has taken shares in a sports consultancy. His charity, Love Saves the Day, claims to provide grants in the Commonwealth including Lesotho and Belize. Established in 2014, and registered with the Charity Commission in June 2014, its most recent accounts — which cover the period to May 2016 — show no income received and no grants made.
One of the charity’s founding trustees was suspended in March this year by the UK’s solicitor regulation authority for one year, for in effect facilitating money laundering into Belize by a third party. “When it was brought to our attention she was being investigated in the UK we stopped using her”, a spokesman for Mr Banks said, adding that Mr Banks made a lot of donations personally outside of the charity “depending on the request”.
It is also unclear how much Mr Banks actually spent on Brexit. He provided money to Leave.EU in the form a £6m loan — he says to avoid inheritance tax. Leave.EU’s first annual accounts, show that as of September 2016 that loan — which is due to be repaid at the end of this year — was still outstanding.
Meanwhile his Better for the Country Ltd — which donated nearly £2m to Grassroots Out — another Brexit campaign group — is owed £1.3m by related parties, and owes £2m to related parties.
This article has been amended to show that Eldon Insurance received a tax credit in 2015.
This article was sent to me as a .pdf – From The FT
There would seem to be many anomalies regarding Banks’ accounts, as have been shown repeatedly on this web site, as you will have noticed.
I am also interested in any information that anyone can supply regarding the financial background etc. of Robert William Parks who would seem to be an accountant or book keeper of some sort.
Also the actual ownership of:
53, Elysten St., Chelsea.
Any properties assetts and corporate info & banking data of:
Thorn In The Side Ltd.
SEEMINGLY involved in the purchase/ownership of properties in:
St. Troupe (or nearby)
& Tuscany.
With regard to property it would be of value to have the correct address & lease details of the property in Washington that it was announced Banks had leased for his and Farage’s use. Which of Banks’ companies actually pay the bills or are they paid from elsewhere! It would also be interesting to know if the FBI/CIA/NSA investigation had something to do with their now infrequent, if ever, visits to Washington. I gather the inquiries are largely concluded with interestintg material leading to the study of connections and relationships, hence the delay in any action!
How Julian Assange received the memory stick which it is understood contained private eMails of Hillary Clinton, and if that was the memory stick who obtained it and was it in fact supplied by Russian sources and who delivered it to him!
There is also interest in a Russian named Mogleivitch and if or what connections he may have with Banks, his Russian wife and/or Nigel Farage.
Similarly the connection with the art collector, yacht & commercial plane owner Dimitry Rybolovlev a Russian olygarch living in Monaco. His meeting(s) with members of Donald Trump’s team particularly in Dubrovnic are also of some interest
On that subject details of the relationship between Jarred Kushner, Dubrovnic & Rybolovlev would be of help.
You may wish to consider also further details regarding the apparently parlous finances of Arron (sometimes Aron) Fraser Andrew BANKS – something of a roundup to 28-Feb-2017CLICK HERE also see HERE & HERE
If you have any information on these issues it would be appreciated and will be treated as from confidential sources, for your safety, but as with all information I publish it will require provenance.
Many thanks to the veritable army of individuals and media who have supplied me with so much material, particularly as I would wish to ensure that BreXit was of British making and not in any way financed or puppet mastered by Putin, Russia or corruption – some of those involved and their associations with Ukip, Farage, Banks, Batten and the very dubious behaviour of both the Metropolitan and West Midlands Police would seem to leave much to be desired as far as I can so far ascertain!
Regards,
Greg_L-W.
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Image copyrightPAImage caption Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, 74, denies five counts of making indecent images
A Russian dissident accused of possessing thousands of indecent images of children should be retried despite his ill health, a judge has ruled.
Vladimir Bukovsky, 74, denies five counts of making indecent images.
He also denies five of possessing indecent images of children and one of possessing a prohibited image.
An earlier trial at Cambridge Crown Court was halted in December after Mr Bukovsky was diagnosed with pneumonia and admitted to hospital.
Judge Gareth Hawkesworth had directed that “if and when” Mr Bukovsky was fit enough to stand trial, it would be heard before a new jury.
‘Vocal critic’
In a hearing at Cambridge Crown Court on Friday, defence counsel Francis FitzGibbon QC argued that the public interest in prosecuting the case was “not so great as to outweigh the recognised risk to this man’s health and wellbeing”.
He said Mr Bukovsky was a “very sick man” who “may not have very long to go in terms of life expectancy”.
But Judge Hawkesworth said: “In my judgment, and this is a very sad matter, but the defendant’s risk of dying tomorrow on an ordinary day is just as high as if the trial was proceeding tomorrow.”
Ruling that a retrial should proceed, he said that the risk to Mr Bukovsky’s health could be mitigated by allowing him to appear by video link from his home in Cambridge and for him to have a medical examination two days ahead of the trial.
Mr Bukovsky, an author and activist who became well known internationally as a vocal critic of the Soviet regime, returned to the UK from Germany to face the charges. He had been receiving private medical treatment abroad.
He is due to stand trial at Cambridge Crown Court on 24 July.
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Now I see the media have the story! I could not risk publishing the facts about possible/probable fraud due to the litigious nature & fundamental dishonesty & corruption that is Ukip!
But here it is, all be it the facts seem watered down!
One has to wonder why Nikki Sinclaire was so beligerently persecuted by West Midland’s Police when set up and lied about by Farage & John Ison respectively – over a sum of a claimed £3,500, where the CPS & police squandered a published £1.5 Million on their vanity case where they were proven 100% wrong & Sinclaire was not only found Not Guilty, by the Jury, but was openly exhonerated by the Judge, who cautioned John Ison, in open Court, for his criminality and neither the Police nor the CPS took any action!
Yet here we are with an EU freeloader who has allegedly milked the tax payer of £100,000 or so and they’ll let him pay it back out of his obscenely over generous EU slush fund!
It also makes one wonder just what the CPS & Police are upto when you add into the melting pot the lies & distortions of the overtly racist Gerard Batten and the persecution of Jasna Badzak over false allegations & an initial claim, alleged by Batten, of around £1,000 which they failed to convince, it was clearly a conviction that was seemingly based on lies, bias and corruption.
Go figure!!
Ukip MEP resigns amid investigation into alleged misuse of funds
Roger Helmer, known for controversial views on climate change, rape and homosexuality, will stand down in July
Roger Helmer faces a demand from the European parliament over a bill close to £100,000. Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian
Tuesday 13 June 2017 18.48 BST Last modified on Tuesday 13 June 2017 22.00 BST
Roger Helmer, a key member of Ukip’s top team, is resigning from the European parliament, ahead of a demand to repay around £100,000 of EU money for alleged misuse of public funds.
The veteran politician, known for his controversial remarks on climate change, rape and homosexuality, is standing down from the European parliament on 31 July, after an 18-year career as an MEP.
He can appeal against the repayment demand at the European court of justice in Luxembourg. If he loses, the parliament has the right to claw back the money by withholding a chunk of a generous “transitional allowance” MEPs get on their departure.
His resignation was announced in a European parliament notice published in Strasbourg on Tuesday. No explanation was given for Helmer’s decision to resign midway through the European parliamentary term.
The Guardian has learnt that Helmer faces a bill close to £100,000 for illicitly employing a Ukip party worker, Paul Oakden, as his assistant. Oakden’s contract has already been suspended.
MEPs are banned from hiring full-time assistants who have jobs in national political parties. Paul Oakden was employed as Helmer’s assistant, while also working as Ukip chairman, according to the party website and in-house magazine.
European parliament financial controllers began their investigation last year and are due to send Helmer a formal “letter for recovery” because they are not satisfied with his explanations of an “administrative misunderstanding”.
Helmer can appeal to the European court of justice in Luxembourg to contest the repayment demand, but if he loses the parliament can claw back the money from a possible €159,000 transitional allowance that the MEP is entitled to for two years after stepping down.
The sum for Helmer’s transitional allowance has been calculated by the Guardian using the parliament’s rulebook, but the final amount could vary and has not been set by in-house accountants.
Contacted by the Guardian, Helmer said: “The only comment I have is how do you know about it and I don’t.”
He declined to answer further questions, but said he would make a statement in a regular news bulletin to his supporters later on Tuesday.
The Guardian was copied into an email Helmer sent to senior officials at the European parliament in February, where he rejected the allegations as “black propaganda”.
Helmer, 73, was a businessman who was elected to the European parliament in 1999 as a Conservative party MEP and re-elected in 2004 and 2009 before defecting to Ukip in March 2012.
He caused outrage when he said some people find same-sex relationships “distasteful if not viscerally repugnant” and argued that there are “different degrees of culpability” in rape cases. Farage, then Ukip leader, said some of Helmer’s remarks on homosexuality had gone too far.
But the MEP continued to play a prominent role in Ukip’s team and was deployed on the airwaves to defend the party, when in 2016 it was asked to repay €173,000 (£148,000) in misspent EU funds and denied an even larger amount in grants, for misspending EU money. A European parliament political group dominated by Ukip was found to have broken EU rules by pouring European money into their campaign war-chest in the 2015 British general election.
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Media captionUKIP’s Paul Nuttall: “I am standing down with immediate effect”
UKIP’s Paul Nuttall has stood down as leader of the party after it failed to win any seats in the general election.
He has resigned with immediate effect and it was announced former party chairman Steve Crowther would lead UKIP on an interim basis.
Mr Nuttall took 3,308 votes in Boston and Skegness – more than 10,000 fewer votes than the party’s result in 2015.
He said it was clear “UKIP requires a new focus and new ideas” but was confident it had a “great future”.
Since resigning as leader he has deleted his Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Mr Nuttall said the party was more relevant than ever and would continue to be “the guard dogs of Brexit”.
“The prime minister, and I suspect it will be a Tory, must know that if they begin to backtrack or barter things away then they must know they will be punished at the ballot box and that will only happen if UKIP is electorally viable and strong.
“We are in effect the country’s insurance policy on Brexit,” he said.
UKIP saw its popularity collapse in the election after securing only 593,852 votes – down from 3,881,099 in 2015.
Mr Nuttall said after the election of a new leader, the party needed to relaunch and rebrand itself and required a new focus, new ideas and a renewed energy.
“I say to members: keep the faith, politics will come back onto our turf and we have to be organised and ready to take full advantage when it does,” he said.
“To the voters I say: UKIP is still here and UKIP is not going away.”The party announced Mr Crowther had “overwhelmingly” been chosen by the national executive committee (NEC). He resigned as UKIP chairman in July 2016 but stood as a candidate in North Devon in the election.
UKIP chairman Paul Oakden said: “Conversations have taken place within the NEC to establish who is best placed to offer that stability in the very short term”.
He added: “Steve has a solid relationship with the NEC, both former leaders and our biggest donors. He has seen this situation before and will know how best to navigate through these tumultuous weeks. Knowing that Steve came top in the last NEC elections by a clear margin, also gives us confidence that he has the support of our membership.”
Job swap
Mr Nuttall took over from Nigel Farage as leader of UKIP last November.
Asked about a future role for Mr Farage in the party, Mr Nuttall said: “If Nigel Farage wants to come back, I would be more than happy to do a job swap.
“I’ll take his slot on LBC (radio station) and he can come back as leader of UKIP.”
Mr Nuttall, a former history lecturer, joined UKIP in 2004 after running for the Conservatives in a council election in Bootle two years earlier.
He became an MEP for North West England in 2009 and served as UKIP deputy leader from 2010 until September last year.
After Mr Farage resigned as UKIP leader following the Brexit referendum in July, Mr Nuttall ruled himself out of taking over.
But when Diane James quit after just 18 days in the job, he put himself forward and was elected with 62% of the vote
Mr Nuttall’s resignation came shortly before UKIP’s general secretary, Jonathan Arnott, also announced he would be resigning.
‘Wake-up call’
In a departing statement, he said the party had “lost its way in recent times” and he “profoundly disagreed” with UKIP’s election campaign.
He attacked the party’s “clumsy, blundering approach” to tackling female genital mutilation and its “hardline anti-Islam messages”.
“The people pushing such an agenda need to reflect on the party’s future. They need to stop making it difficult – impossible, even – for many people to vote UKIP,” he said.
“This election result is the last wake-up call that they will ever get.”
Mr Oakden paid tribute to Mr Nuttall’s leadership over “difficult months” for the party.
He said: “I want to offer my heartfelt thanks to Paul Nuttall for having had the courage and strength of will to forge on.
“Paul is a good, decent and humble man and I’ve no doubt that he will be remembered as the person who kept UKIP alive when everything seemed determined to bring it to an end.”
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it would seem that the Entertainer Nigel Farage has found his role in life – I guess he will either be featuring in Pantomimes next or following in the footsteps of his agent’s other client Lester Piggott and winding up in Court never to be heard of in public again!
Here’s an idea for Peter Burrell he could give Farage a job entertaining the audience waiting for his hoped for RockNRollLegends venue – as they are likely to have a long wait, that is if he can ever raise the £Millions he wants to get it going!:
Kind of a dustbin for the careers of entertainers whether from sport or politics, after their careers are over!
“Representing Nigel Farage”
Unlike most politicians, Nigel Farage had a successful career in business before he stood for office, working on the City metals exchange. He gave up that career not to feather his own nest, but to campaign for a cause he believed in, becoming a founding member of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in the early 1990s, and its first ever election candidate in 1994.
UKIP was founded to campaign against Britain’s membership of the EU and restore its status as a free-standing, self-governing democracy with an independent voice in the councils of the world. It was not a fashionable cause among the elite politicians and privileged commentariat, but Nigel stuck by it faithfully.
In time, he built the party up from winning a handful of votes in its early days to coming first in the European elections of 2014. One year on, he achieved a record four million votes for the party at the General Election, defying all odds to make UKIP the third-largest political force in the country.
Nigel is widely recognised as the man whose relentless campaigning forced the ruling Conservative Party, which had been haemorrhaging votes to UKIP, to finally offer a referendum on EU membership before that General Election; a promise they were held to after winning a small and unexpected parliamentary majority.
More than that, Nigel is credited with having been the man who won over the blue-collar, working-class voters who carried the day for the Leave movement in that referendum, refusing to shy away from the issues of immigration and quality of life which the Labour Party and the growth-at-all-costs elites running the Conservative Party had long failed to acknowledge.
Described as “the most important British politician of the last decade and the most successful”, Nigel’s resignation has left a hole in the nation’s political fabric. Through skill, sheer determination and more than a little chutzpah, he has transformed UKIP into a permanent fixture of our democracy, achieved his lifetime’s ambition of an independent Britain, and rocked the political Establishment across an entire continent.
In so doing, Nigel has proven the exception to the the iron rule that “all political lives end in failure”, something which should come as no surprise for a man who has enjoyed a thoroughly exceptional career. The history of not just the United Kingdom but of Europe and the world is changed because of him, and his place within it is etched in stone.
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I wonder could the revelations George Cottrell used in his plea bargain explain more about why Nigel Farage & Aaron Banks have not exploited the opportunities available, with as much frequency or enthusiasm as one might have expected, as a result of having met Donald Trump, renting a house in Washington and becoming a correspondent for Fox News.
That George Cottrell’s plea bargain involved providing sensitive information, seemingly too sensitive for the judge to release yet adequate to have set aside TWENTY counts against him, including blackmail, which were dismissed as part of the plea deal with only one charge left standing.
That the likely sentence was reduced from 20 years to under 8 months, would likely indicate the revelations he made in his plea bargain were of no small consequence.
It does qive one pause for thought!
Former Farage aide gave US information in plea deal, court files show
Files do not spell out nature of information George Cottrell handed federal agents after his arrest on money-laundering charges
After Cottrell’s arrest, Nigel Farage called him a ‘22-year-old unpaid volunteer and party supporter’. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images
Wednesday 7 June 2017 13.52 BST Last modified on Wednesday 7 June 2017 19.54 BST
A former aide to Nigel Farage who was arrested on money-laundering charges last year gave US federal agents “information” as part of a plea agreement that sharply reduced his possible prison sentence from a maximum of 20 years to eight months, according to court documents.
George Cottrell, a Briton who was arrested in the US last summer after attending the Republican National Convention with Farage, the former Ukip leader, received a sentence that was on the low end of the sentencing guidelines used to determine such cases even though the Arizona prosecutors in his case said they had evidence that showed Cottrell had shown “clear intent” to engage in criminal activity in the past.
A court document filed by the prosecutors in February – which has not previously been reported in detail – advised the judge in the case to offer Cottrell a light prison sentence because he had been willing to “provide federal agents additional information after his arrest”.
Cottrell ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in a case that was unrelated to his work at Ukip. The crime was committed in 2014, before Cottrell worked for either the anti-EU party or Farage. Twenty other counts against him, including blackmail, were dismissed as part of the plea deal.
The nature of the information Cottrell provided to federal agents is not spelled out in the court documents. But the documents state that the 23-year-old, who is living in the UK, provided federal agents with “additional information about his role in the offence and how he became involved”. It also suggests he could be called to testify about his statements in the future and that additional information about the plea may be under seal and unavailable to the public.
Cottrell was reached by the Guardian but declined to comment on the information he provided or questions about his previous work for Farage and Ukip.
Under the terms of his agreement with prosecutors, Cottrell admitted to communicating with individuals online in 2014 who were seeking to launder illicit funds. He also admitted that he had explained methods to them that they could use to launder the money. The case involved a sting operation in which federal agents posed as drug dealers. Cottrell met the undercover agents in Las Vegas in 2014, according to the original indictment, but the charges in connection with that meeting were dropped.
Prosecutors said Cottrell also deserved leniency because he promptly agreed to plead guilty on the wire fraud charge and had accepted responsibility for his actions. They also noted that he did not have a criminal record. An attorney who represented Cottrell did not return calls for comment.
The dramatic arrest occurred at O’Hare airport in Chicago on 22 July, just as Cottrell, who was travelling with Farage, was leaving the US for the UK after attending the Republican National Convention in Ohio.
His mobile phone and laptop were seized after the arrest.
Cottrell had been working in Farage’s office and claimed on his LinkedIn account to have co-directed Ukip’s EU referendum campaign fundraising.
Media accounts at the time described Cottrell as a familiar face on Farage’s campaign bus ahead of the EU referendum.
After the arrest, Farage called Cottrell a “22-year-old unpaid volunteer and party supporter” and said he knew nothing of the “series of allegations” that had been lodged against him.
According to court records that delved into the 2014 episode, Cottrell offered to help the undercover agents – who were posing as drug dealers – to disguise their drug profits and evade federal taxes. Prosecutors also alleged that Cottrell claimed to have contacts at banks that he could use to funnel illicit money to offshore accounts and then transfer them back to domestic accounts disguised as legitimate business income. Prosecutors said in court documents that the agents were “impressed with his knowledge of finance, US government procedures, and anti-money-laundering laws”.
He was released from prison in March after agreeing the plea deal and was deported from the US, according to court records.
Several photographs published by media outlets after the arrest in July, when Cottrell’s story was front page news in the British press, showed that Cottrell had enjoyed a personal relationship with Farage and the Ukip donor Arron Banks. In his book about the Brexit campaign, Banks called Cottrell, the nephew of Lord Hesketh, a former Tory minister who defected to Ukip, “Posh George”.
“Posh to the point of caricature and wilfully abrasive, but extremely generous when it comes to picking up the bar tab,” Banks wrote.
At the time of his final court appearance in March, the judge in his case, Diane Humetewa, described Cottrell as having lived a “very privileged life”.
Twenty counts against Cottrell were dropped in the plea deal, including a conspiracy charge. Under the new charge, Humetewa said Cottrell was facing a possible sentence of eight to 14 months. She accepted prosecutors’ recommendation of the lowest possible sentence.
Cottrell, who apologised for wrongdoing, suggested he had turned to crime after suffering from a multimillion-dollar gambling addiction that had caused him to be disinherited. His attorney, Michael Kimerer, described the fraud as a single aberrant, abnormal and huge mistake, and said Cottrell had been a law-abiding citizen since that period in 2014, and that he had become involved in politics, which he enjoyed.
The prosecutor in the case, James Knapp, said of Cottrell’s guilty plea: “We do see this as being a significant crime in that the dark web can be a hotbed of criminal activity, and, you know, the use of anonymity and encryption and all of that makes it very difficult to catch people.”
He added: “But, on the other hand, we fully recognise that there are some mitigating circumstances in this defendant, and we wish him the best of luck in the future and hope that we never see him again in this context.”
The final plea concluded that investigators were ultimately unable to confirm whether Cottrell really was a professional money launderer who had committed crimes before the one to which he pleaded guilty, but that he had the experience given previous work in the financial industry, and the “predisposition”, given his use of dark web marketing, to commit crime.
Cottrell’s LinkedIn account reveals that he has experience in the financial sector. He includes being a “federal inmate” on his LinkedIn resume, as well as working as a consultant at an unnamed private intelligence agency serving government and corporate clients. He allegedly worked for the intelligence firm from October 2014 to July 2016, while also working for Ukip from January 2016 until his arrest.
He also claims to have worked as a private client manager at an unnamed bank, specialised in “onboarding” wealthy clients and assisting in the implementation of “leading edge tax solutions within multiple jurisdictions”. He also allegedly worked as a junior adviser at Cayman fund and as a board adviser for a “private family office” in London.
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you may well recall Bob Spink was Ukip’s First MP having defected from the Tories in 2008 – he retained his Castle Point seat as a turncoat until the subsequent election, where having tried to hedge his bets by announcing, rather feebly, that although he had defected to Ukip he never paid his membership, which was denied by Farage at the time but having two such untrustworthy characters accusing eachother of telling lies just made them both look foolish.
Either way Bob Spink lost his seat in the 2010 election!
Bob Spink also had a period as Chairman of the little known and insignificant CIB (Campaign for an Independent Britain), an organisation that seems to consider building a bank account and over paying a few staff is its main aim rather than investing its money in campaigning for an independent Britain!
In his efforts to find a job VBob Spink, who is almost 70, also stood under the Ukip banner as their Police and Crime Commissioner in Essex, something of a non job which he unsurprisingly failed to get.
Bob Spink has his own problems with the Police at the moment as he faces charges for electoral Crime in Crown Court today 05-Jun-2017:
Former Ukip MP Dr Bob Spink and party campaigner James Parkin appear in court to face electoral fraud allegations
A FORMER Ukip MP and a party campaigner have appeared in court charged with electoral fraud at last May’s council elections.
Dr Bob Spink, who served as MP for Castle Point for almost nine years until 2010, and James Parkin, 38, are charged with a total of 14 offences.
The pair appeared at Southend Magistrates’ Court this morning to deny the allegations, which relate to nomination papers for candidates at last year’s vote in the Castle Point borough.
Dr Spink, 68, of Downer Road, Benfleet, faces five allegations that on or before April 5 he obtained the genuine signature of an elector for the purposes of nominating a candidate, despite the elector not knowing it was for that purpose.
Parkin, of Castle View Road, Canvey, faces the same five allegations in addition to four charges of supplying a false signature on nomination papers.
Dr Spink, wearing a black suit and blue and burgundy tie, shook his head as the charges were read out.
Both men indicated through their lawyer they deny the accusations and want the case to be heard by a crown court jury.
Both men were released on bail until the June 5 hearing.
Dr Spink was the Tory MP for Castle Point between 1992 and 1997, and won the seat again at the 2001 election.
He defected to Ukip in 2008, becoming the party’s first MP, but left later that year. He lost his seat in 2010 to Tory Rebecca Harris but later rejoined Ukip.
The Yorkshire-born politician also recently unsuccessfully stood for Ukip to become Essex Police and Crime Commissioner, losing out to Tory candidate Roger Hirst.
Parkin served as Ukip’s election agent and also stood in Castle Point’s Cedar Hall ward in May’s vote but was defeated by Tory candidate Liz Wass.
Dr. Bob Spink & James Parkin
His wife, Lucy Parkin, stood in the Winter Gardens ward but lost out on a seat to Allan Taylor, from the Canvey Independent Party.
Interestingly in something of a reveral of Bob Spink’s move from Tory to a daliance with Ukip a past aspirant leader of Ukip, Craig McKinley, who joined the Tories when he was defeated for the leadership by Nigel Farage and then went on to stand against Nigel Farage for the Thanet seat as an MP, which he won, seemingly under something of a cloud is also facing the Courts for Electoral Fraud!
The belated charges brought against McKinley, just before the General Election, have all the justification for complaint against the CPS & Electoral Commission as were leveled against the FBI by supporters of Hillary Clinton, but despite the allegations of investigation of Nigel Farage for too close an association with Russia and its agents – I would doubt that Russia has as much interest in the well being of McKinley as they would seem to have had manipulating the American Presidential elections in which Farage & his chum and sponsor Aaron Banks became embroilled!
Regards, Greg_L-W.
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Posted by: Greg Lance-Watkins
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minded that on this site we have introduced reference to both OLAF’s current enquiries in some detail in December and even long before that, we have also alluded to Russian money in conection with Aaron Banks going back some seven years and there is little doubt Nigel Farage has been a beneficiary of Aaron Banks’ clearly dubious and far from transparent income!
It is a well documented fact that Nigel Farage and Ukip have been funded by Aaron Banks, what is not well documented with any degree of transparency has been both Aaron Banks’ income sources or for that matter those of Nigel Farage!
I expect Nigel Farage to run off to Mssrs. Carter Ruck, as he has in the past, to seek to suppress this story and any further speculation that might give arise to the truth becoming known – however I have my doubts that Carter Ruck will be willing to embroil themselves in confrontation with the FBI, CIA & NSA – all of whom seem to consider Nigel Farage as of special interest – it is noteworthy that Nigel Farage’s visits to America seem to have become less frequent, in fact seem to have stopped.
Presumably Aaron Banks is also avoiding America at the moment, could this be because they fear one of the American Security Agencies may subpoena them? It does seem strange when you consider Aaron Banks has funded the renting of a house in Washington for their use.
That Nigel Farage has been in contact with Assange since 2010 seems common knowledge, yet it looks all too similar to common with Soviet practice, and be minded that Putin was at one time head of the KGB, that Nigel Farage may well be considered a spent assett as his cover was under NSA, FBI, CIA scrutiny – could that be the very reason he went to visit Assange openly at the Ecuadorean Embassy, thus completely blowing his cober and effectively washing Russia’s hands of him now he is no more than yesterday’s errand boy.
I incline to believe Nigel Farage & Aaron Banks may well have progressed from People of Special Interest via Alpha Bank accounts under investigation in July 2016 to actual suspects or being on the wanted list – hence their empty house in Washington.
I presume, with his fascination for Russia and support of Chechen rebels and Litvenenko Gerard Batten may also feature on the FBI, CIA, NSA individual of special interest list, boring as he is. Gerard Batten’s staff may well also require closer attention minded of their aid and assistance to the paedophile Vladimir Bukovsky, whose trial would seem to have been delayed on CLAIMS of his ill health – apart from his sick interest in child pornography which it would seem is not just a matter of public knowledge but also seemingly undeniable one wonders if claims of other sicknesses are a matter of expediency, as it was quoted in open Court that his trial would continue in January 2017, as I recall.
Personally, after many years of close study and many informants who have chosen to remain anonymous despite senior positions in Ukip, I have no reason to believe that Ukip, via Aaron Banks, Nigel Farage and others have NOT been in receipt of Russian money, that has materially altered their political stance – just as USSR funding of CND during Cathy Ashton’s tenure as Treasurer and no doubt regularly at other times materially assisted CND to damage the nuclear research and harm progress and safety on a deliberately anti British and indeed anti Western course.
Be minded that the lack of R&D largely caused by CND and funded by the USSR is directly responsible for the arcane standards and practices that led to the catastyrophic situation at Fukishima in Japan, a danger that is still within little more than 48 hours of catastrophe for our planet if they can not keep the faulty system cooled. a system which may require the faulty system continuing to function for possibly 1,000s of years as there seems to be no cure available! Gee thanks CND & USSR – they may yet lead to our species being annihilated.
It is this level of apparent betrayal and involvement of Russia brought about, it seems, by Donald Trump’s team and others acting out of self interest like Cathy Ashton, Gerard Batten, Marien LePen, Nigel Farage, Aaron Banks, Kushner, Cohen and their ilk not to mention Schroder who was rewarded for his damage to Western EUrope and the West with a directorship of Gascom & oligarch status, that befouls Western politics.
One can not and should not seek to blame Russia and their agents such as the former KGB now FSB as it is clearly their duty to act in Russia’s interest, including subverting Western politics by beguilling those willing to betray their own country for personal gain.
It does rather seem that IF those seemingly involved with and for Russia are brought to book they may well be best served by taking a leaf out of Nigel Farage’s aid George Cottrell’s book and pleading guilty to seek a plea bargain and possible absolution, all be it with an American ‘Personna Non Grata’ stamp in their passports!
Report: Nigel Farage a ‘Person of Interest’ in FBI Russia Probe
Rafael Marchante/Reuters
Nigel Farage, the former pro-Brexit Ukip leader in the U.K., is now a “person of interest” in the U.S. counterintelligence investigation on possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, The Guardian reports. Farage reportedly raised the interest of FBI officials because of his relationships with both the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “One of the things the intelligence investigators have been looking at is points of contact and persons involved,” one source said. “If you triangulate Russia, WikiLeaks, Assange, and Trump associates, the person who comes up with the most hits is Nigel Farage.” He has not yet been accused of wrongdoing and is not an official suspect.
Friday 2 June 2017 10.31 BST First published on Thursday 1 June 2017 12.30 BST
Nigel Farage is a “person of interest” in the US counter-intelligence investigation that is looking into possible collusion between the Kremlin and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, the Guardian has been told.
Sources with knowledge of the investigation said the former Ukip leader had raised the interest of FBI investigators because of his relationships with individuals connected to both the Trump campaign and Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder whom Farage visited in March.
WikiLeaks published troves of hacked emails last year that damaged Hillary Clinton’s campaign and is suspected of having cooperated with Russia through third parties, according to recent congressional testimony by the former CIA director John Brennan, who also said the adamant denials of collusion by Assange and Russia were disingenuous.
Farage has not been accused of wrongdoing and is not a suspect or a target of the US investigation. But being a person of interest means investigators believe he may have information about the acts that are under investigation and he may therefore be subject to their scrutiny.
Sources who spoke to the Guardian said it was Farage’s proximity to people at the heart of the investigation that was being examined as an element in their broader inquiry into how Russia may have worked with Trump campaign officials to influence the US election.
“One of the things the intelligence investigators have been looking at is points of contact and persons involved,” one source said. “If you triangulate Russia, WikiLeaks, Assange and Trump associates the person who comes up with the most hits is Nigel Farage.
“He’s right in the middle of these relationships. He turns up over and over again. There’s a lot of attention being paid to him.”
The source mentioned Farage’s links with Roger Stone, Trump’s long-time political adviser who has admitted being in contact with Guccifer 2.0, a hacker whom US intelligence agencies believe to be a Kremlin agent.
Roger Stone in his office in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Photograph: Miami Herald/MCT via Getty Images
Farage’s spokesman said he had never worked with Russian officials, and described the Guardian’s questions about Farage’s activities as “verging on the hysterical”.
“Nigel has never been to Russia, let alone worked with their authorities,” the spokesman said. But he did not respond to questions about whether Farage was aware of the FBI inquiry; had hired a lawyer in connection to the matter; or when Farage first met Trump.
The spokesman also declined to comment on whether Farage had received compensation from the Russian state-backed media group RT for his media appearances. RT, which has featured Farage about three times over the last 18 months, also declined to comment, citing confidentiality.
On Thursday Farage dismissed the story as “fake news”. He said he visited Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in March at the behest of LBC Radio “with a view to conducting an interview”.
He added: “I consider it extremely doubtful that I could be a person of interest to the FBI as I have no connections to Russia.”
Farage has said he only met Assange once has but declined to say how long the two have known each other.
The FBI’s national press office said it had no comment on Farage.
One source familiar with the US investigation told the Guardian that the examination of Farage’s activities was considered especially delicate given his role as an MEP.
Neither Farage nor Trump have made a secret of their admiration for one another. They emerged as unlikely winners last year in contests that have reshaped the world order: Britain’s vote to leave the EU and Trump’s surprise ascendency to the White House.
Both men credited their ability to tap into the worries of struggling and neglected citizens for their victories. But at the heart of the US investigation lies a deeper question: whether Trump campaign officials and people close to the former reality TV star sought to work with state players in Russia to try to influence the US election result.
Last July, Farage attended the Republican national convention in Cleveland, Ohio, when Trump became the party’s nominee.
According to an account by the Ukip donor Arron Banks, Farage first met Trump at a campaign stop in Mississippi in August, where he spoke at a Trump campaign event.
But Farage’s relationships with people close to the US president began years earlier. Farage first met Steve Bannon, Trump’s strategist and former campaign chief executive, in the summer of 2012, when Bannon, who was interested in rightwing movements in Europe, invited the then Ukip leader to spend a few days in New York and Washington, according to an account in the New Yorker magazine.
There Farage was introduced to, among others, the staff of the then senator Jeff Sessions, who is now the US attorney general. Speaking of his longtime admiration for Bannon, Farage told the New Yorker last year: “I have got a very, very high regard for that man’s brain.”
In 2015, Breitbart News arranged a dinner in Farage’s honour at “the embassy”, the nickname for the house the news group rented in Washington. According to a report in Bloomberg, attendees were “blown away” by Farage’s speech at the event, which was also attended by Sessions.
Then, on 24 June last year, the day after the UK voted to leave the EU, Farage thanked Bannon during an interview for Breitbart News’s coverage of the leave campaign. Bannon, in turn, congratulated Farage on his victory, saying he had led an extraordinary “David v Goliath” campaign.
Farage’s ties to Stone are also under scrutiny, it is understood. Stone has frequently publicised his relationship with Assange and described him on Twitter as “my hero”.
Stone publicly predicted the 2016 release of hacked emails from the Clinton campaign that now lie at the heart of the federal inquiry. Democrats on the House intelligence committee have named Stone in their hearings and, according to the New York Times, he is now under investigation.
Last summer, just a few weeks before Farage met Trump in Mississippi, Stone bragged about having a “mutual friend” who served as an intermediary between himself and Assange. He also mentioned in a separate tweet that he had dinner with Farage, though the date of the encounter is unclear.
After Trump’s victory, Farage was one of the first foreign politicians to meet and celebrate with the Republican president-elect, and had his picture taken with Trump in front of a golden elevator in Trump Tower just days after the US election.
The tweet prompted a curt response from Downing Street, which pointed out that there was “no vacancy”. A spokesman said: “We already have an excellent ambassador.”
The pair met again in February, when they had dinner together with Trump’s daughter and adviser, Ivanka, and her husband and White House adviser, Jared Kushner.
Farage was asked about his relationship with Assange in a recent interview with Die Zeit, the German newspaper, after he was seen on 9 March leaving the Ecuadorian embassy where Assange has lived for years. Farage, who declared he had “never received a penny from Russia”, said he met Assange for “journalistic reasons”.
Pressed on his meetings with Russian officials in the past, Farage initially denied having had any, but then acknowledged that he had met Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian ambassador to the UK, in 2013.
Asked by Die Zeit what he was doing now, and whether he saw himself as a politician or a journalist, Farage concluded: “Changing public opinion. That’s what I have been doing for 20 years. Using television, media. Shifting public opinion. That’s what I am good at.”
A spokesman for Farage told the Guardian he had only met Assange on that one occasion. “The meeting was organised by a broadcaster, they could have easily sent another presenter instead.”
Key players in Russia-Trump investigation
Donald Trump
Photograph: UPI/Barcroft Images
The US president’s campaign team and people close to him are being investigated for possibly colluding with Russian state actors to influence the outcome of last November’s election. Trump, who has called the investigation “fake news” and recently fired the FBI director leading the case, was a staunch defender of Farage’s Brexit campaign and has met the former Ukip leader, whom he proposed several times as a possible UK ambassador to the US. While Trump recently said he would be OK with the US arresting Assange for leaks of sensitive information, he has previously sided with the Wikileaks founder, repeating Assange’s claim that he did not receive support from Russia.
Nigel Farage
Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA
The former Ukip leader was an enthusiastic supporter of Trump’s presidential campaign and attended the 2016 Republican national convention. He also has links with Steve Bannon, Trump’s White House strategist, and Roger Stone, the president’s decades-long political mentor. Farage has praised Vladimir Putin as a strong leader and has appeared several times on RT, Russia’s English-language propaganda channel. Farage has declined to say how much money RT paid him. Sources say Farage is a “person of interest” in the FBI’s investigation into whether Trump’s associates colluded with Russia during the presidential election.
Steve Bannon
Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty
The president’s chief White House strategist, who served as chief executive of the Trump campaign, has known Farage since 2012, when he was working as a senior editor at Breitbart News, the rightwing news website. The former investment banker – seen as the driving force behind Trump’s “America First” nationalist policies – hosted Farage in the US while he was leading Ukip and introduced him to key US conservatives. Breitbart strongly supported the leave campaign during the EU referendum in the UK and Bannon is seen as the main conduit between Trump and Farage.
Roger Stone
Photograph: Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters
The Republican operative, who has known Trump for decades, is at the centre of the FBI investigation. Stone, who reportedly keeps in touch with Trump, boasted last year that he had a “back channel” to Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, and predicted the release by Wikileaks of emails that damaged Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Last summer, Stone tweeted that he had dinner with Farage – confirming the pair’s relationship – and had contact with Guccifer 2.0, who claimed responsibility for the hacking of Democratic party emails.
Julian Assange
Photograph: Frank Augstein/AP
The editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks played a key role in the release of hacked Democratic party emails, according to US intelligence agencies. They allege Russian hackers working for two Moscow spy agencies – the GRU and the FSB – gave the emails to Assange in London. WikiLeaks then published the leaked emails in July and October. This damaged Clinton’s campaign and helped Trump’s, US intelligence says. Assange denies the emails came from a state. In March, Farage visited Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, just days after he had dined with Trump in Washington.
It is interesting to note that Ekaterina Paderina’s new married name is Banks and it would seem her husband Aaron Banks became the principle backer of Ukip with an income and resources that seem far from transparent6!
This correspondence between Ukip’s Press Office, the Farage gofer Gawain Towler and Gerard Batten thus becomes even more interesting:
From: Gawain Towler <gawain@gmail.com>
To: Gerard Batten <gerard.batten@btinternet.com>
Subject: Fwd: Evening Standard Letters – Katia Zatuliveter
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2010 14:27
Gerard,
Can you help here?
G
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: <joshua.neicho@standard.co.uk>
Date: 6 December 2010 14:22
Subject: Evening Standard Letters – Katia Zatuliveter
I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
Greg Lance - Watkins (Greg_L-W)
The party announced Mr Crowther had “overwhelmingly” been chosen by the national executive committee (NEC). He resigned as UKIP chairman in July 2016 but stood as a candidate in North Devon in the election.
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Arron Banks with some of his many business and politicalFormer Ukip leader Nigel Farage celebrates Arron Bank’s £1m donation to the party in October 2014 © Getty
A page from Rock Services Ltd’s 2015 accounts showing ‘related party’ disclosures Eldon operates the motor insurance brand GoSkippy, and prominently advertises on the website of Leave.EU, Mr Banks’ pro- Brexit campaign group.
A page from Eldon’s 2015 accounts.
Arron Banks provided money to Leave.EU in the form of a £6m loan, he says to avoid inheritance tax © AFP
Kind of a dustbin for the careers of entertainers whether from sport or politics, after their careers are over!
Unlike most politicians, Nigel Farage had a successful career in business before he stood for office, working on the City metals exchange. He gave up that career not to feather his own nest, but to campaign for a cause he believed in, becoming a founding member of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in the early 1990s, and its first ever election candidate in 1994.
For more facts about Arron Banks CLICK HERE or HERE & ALSO HERE plus CLICK HERE & HERE and HERE TOO also HERE 
Ukip-vs-EUkip 