It Is Said ‘There is no such thing as bad publicity’ but even #Ukip must see proof of Racism, Fraud, Child Abuse, Perversion, Corruption, Sexual Exploitation & now Murder as a step too far …
it may seem a little harsh to make any issue of the Ukip association with this murder BUT when you consider the fact that the main UK political parties between them hold over 19,000 elected offices and were any of them arrested for murder the connection with their party would be noted.
The issue here is of the very few elected offices held by a collapsing fringe party like Ukip, which clearly punches above its weight in the meeja and sets such store by publicity that one of that miniscule number is arrested for murder must be seen as more newsworthy than had it been n individual from a large party of consequence.
Murder probe launched after wife of former UKIP councillor found dead at marital home
Former Royal Marine and UKIP councillor, Stephen Seale is being questioned by policeCredit: Facebook
A murder investigation has been launched after the wife of a former UKIP councillor was found dead at their Suffolk home.
Anne Searle, 62, died at the four-bedroom property she shared with Stephen Searle, 64, who stood for UKIP in last year’s General Election.
Mr Searle is a retired Royal Marines Commando, who sold poppies for the British Legion.
He was elected to Suffolk County Council in 2013, winning the Stowmarket South seat by a single vote.
Police were called to an address in Stowmarket shortly after 10pm on Saturday night and discovered the body of his wife of more than 40 years.
Suffolk Police said a 64-year-old man, who was known to the victim was arrested on suspicion of murder.
The force refused to say if the suspect was Mr Searle.
The body of Ann Searle was found dead at their home in StowmarketCredit: Facebook
The couple have three sons and several grandchildren.
It was not known how Mrs Searle, a former pub landlady, died and police said a post-mortem examination would take place in the coming days.
Mr Searle, who was originally from Scotland, lost his council seat in May’s election, coming fourth behind the Tories, Liberal Democrats and Labour.
Speaking after his election, Mr Searle said: “It’s superb to be fighting again for my country, and my people.”
Before retiring the couple ran a pub, known as the Stag Tavern in Stowmarket, but they sold it in 1992.
A heavy police presence could be seen outside the £400,000 family home yesterday as forensic teams hunted for clues
Police were called to an address in Stowmarket on Saturday nightCredit: SWNS
Two police officers also stood guard outside the front door of the property, which sits on a corner plot of the quiet residential cul-de-sac.
Christmas lights were still hanging from the porch and a festive wreath could be seen pinned to the front door.
Neighbours described their shock after hearing news of the tragedy in the quiet cul de sac.
Neighbour Richard Hallett, 40, said: “I saw the ambulance at about 11pm. There was one ambulance and two rapid response vehicles and three police cars.
“I was watching tv and heard something so I looked out of the window and thought ‘where did that come from?’.
“I thought the gentleman from the house where the woman died worked with the Salvation Army and did the poppy collection.
“He seemed like a nice bloke. We tend to get the poppies from him.”
Another resident, who asked not to be named, said: “I saw a load of flashing lights outside and
thought something must have happened
Steve Searle was elected to Suffolk County Council as a UKIP councillor in 2013
“I never imagined it could be something like this. What an awful thing to happen at this time of year.
“I hope at the very least it was just a tragic accident and not murder, that would just be devastating.”
A spokesman for The East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust (EEAST) said: “We received a call at 10.22pm on 30th December to The Brickfields, Stowmarket, to a report of a woman who was not breathing.
“An ambulance crew, ambulance officer and rapid response vehicle were dispatched.
“They treated a woman in cardiac arrest. Despite their best efforts, the patient sadly died at the scene.
Stephen Searle is a retired Royal Marine CommandoCredit: Facebook
A spokesman for Suffolk Police said: “The suspect is a 64-year-old man from Stowmarket, arrested at the scene of the crime shortly after police arrival.
“He has been taken to Bury St Edmunds Police Investigation Centre for questioning. The victim and suspect are believed to have been known to each other.”
The force added: “”Police were called to an address in The Brickfields at 10.20pm.
“On arrival at the property a woman, believed to be aged in her 60s, was discovered unresponsive.
“Paramedics attended the address but the woman was declared deceased at the scene.
“The death is being treated as suspicious and a man has been arrested on suspicion of murder.
“A police cordon is in place at the property whilst officers carry out an investigation.”
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Meet ‘Posh George’: The Shady Money Man Tangled Up With Brexit, Russia, and Trump
Why did Nigel Farage take a dark web fraudster to the Republican convention? And what did this young money-laundering maven tell the feds when they busted him?
LONDON—When Nigel Farage, Mr. Brexit, watched Donald Trump accept the Republican Party’s presidential nomination at the convention last year he had an extremely unlikely companion. His closest aide on the trip was an offshore investment expert who had boasted on the dark web about his ability to launder money illegally in and out of the United States.
The aide, George Cottrell, was busted at Chicago’s O’Hare airport on his way home to London on July 22, 2016. He would later plead guilty to participating in a scheme “to advertise money laundering services on a TOR network black-market website.”
With questions being raised about a dark money influence on Brexit—and the election of Donald Trump—all of this begs the question: who was this criminal operative chosen to accompany Farage at the RNC where he met with some of Trump’s best known boosters, including Newt Gingrich and Roger Stone?
As well as Cottrell’s advertised ability to transmit money across borders without detection, he was well versed in the world of offshore and cross-border banking. Despite having no political experience, this was the man—aged just 22 at the time—Farage chose to run his office at the height of the battle for Brexit. He was also the co-director of Brexit fundraising for UKIP.
Cottrell is young to have developed such knowledge of international finance, but then again he was first registered as the director of a business, Upsilon Investments six years ago while he was still a high school-aged kid —alongside an offshore director based in the British Virgin Islands—according to records lodged with Companies House in London.
Before entering his guilty plea, Cottrell changed his name to George Cotrel. He told the U.S. authorities this was intended to “distance his previous involvement in certain political activities.” It didn’t work.
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Some of those who saw him running around for Farage while working at the pro-Brexit party thought of Cottrell as a “swashbuckler”—a player who remained popular in Farage’s clique not least because he was known to be extremely generous at the bar.
Others say he was a serious operator. “He was a very smart cookie, very clever chap. When I was campaigning with him, he was erudite and had all the attributes going for him,” said Nigel Sussman, the commercial director of the pro-Moscow group Westminster Russia Forum and a former UKIP candidate.
“He was very well connected,” Sussman told The Daily Beast.
Cottrell had worked for a number of banks, including a most recent role helping high net worth individuals shift their money across borders. He also claims he had been working as a consultant in the financial intelligence unit of an intelligence agency for over a year when he joined UKIP—in a senior role that he undertook for free. “I don’t think he was ever paid a bean by the party, not a single bean,” said a party official.
A UKIP insider said he was remarkably effective and knowledgeable for his age. “He’s entirely personable, entirely likeable, a great fun figure and very impressive getting things done,” he said. “He brought us skills of immense chutzpah and phenomenal self-confidence.”
Known as “Posh George” by Farage and his entourage, Cottrell is the nephew of Lord Hesketh, a former Conservative party treasurer who later defected to the more radical right-wing UKIP. His mother, Fiona Cottrell, was reportedly a former girlfriend of Prince Charles.
After Cottrell was released from federal prison in the U.S., former UKIP candidate and party supporter William Cash wrote a sympathetic profile for The Daily Telegraph. As part of a detailed interview, it offered an account of how Cottrell got mixed up in dark web fraud that was radically different from the sworn testimony he gave in court. The article claimed he was approached at his bank by two American businessmen who wanted to sell their property portfolio. His guilty plea, by contrast, admitted that he had offered illicit money laundering services on a TOR site.
While the interview seemed keen to paint a more understanding picture of Cottrell—a young man who got into trouble after struggling with gambling—it does also fill in some of the questions around why Cottrell would prove useful to Farage. It was apparently not just his family connections that secured his job; he was said to have “learned about the murky and complicated world of `shadow banking,’, secret offshore accounts and sophisticated financial structures” while he worked at a private bank.
“It was these skills that landed Cottrell an unpaid role” at UKIP according to Cash, who explained that Cottrell went on to work “for an offshore private bank (which was under investigation by the U.S. authorities as a `foreign financial institution of primary money-laundering concern’).”
A LinkedIn page in Cottrell’s name is careful not to name all of the banks he has worked for. Instead it talks about working for a private bank as a “Client Manager within cross-border private banking division, responsible for onboarding HNWI individuals,” or as an “advisor to the Investment Manager of a Cayman administered fund of funds.”
The LinkedIn account is less secretive about his “interests.” The 41 organizations listed on the profile include Cottrell’s old school and some of the global financial powerhouses you would expect to see on the account of any financier, but there are also some more unusual connections.
Cottrell is listed as one of just 71 followers of Moldinconbank, a controversial Moldovan bank that was alleged to be at the very center of the “Russian Laundromat” scam that laundered billions in illicit funds from Moscow through fraud, rigged state contracts and tax evasion. Some of those laundered state funds reportedly went to pay foreigners who were acting on behalf of the Kremlin, such as the leader of a small Polish political party who was later arrested on charges of spying for Russia.
The Daily Beast asked the bank whether Cottrell had ever worked with them, but the HR department would only say: “According to the legislation in force, personal data is granted only with the agreement of the employee.”
Another of the Cottrell account’s “interests” is the bank FBME, an entity which was officially based in Tanzania but had foreign offices in two countries: Cyprus and Russia. According to a U.S. investigation the bank was linked to Bashar al Assad and al Qaeda as well as a $230m fraud against the Russian people uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, which led to a series of anti-corruption laws being introduced around the world in his name. In 2014, the bank was banned from accessing the American market by the U.S. Treasury after money laundering allegations.
The Daily Beast cannot independently verify that this LinkedIn page was written by Cottrell but a UKIP spokesman confirmed that the entry about his role in the party was accurate. The LinkedIn account is also linked—from and to—a Twitter account in Cottrell’s name, which has 140 followers. Those followers include a host of UKIP or Brexit campaign insiders including Joe Jenkins, Jack Montgomery, Michael Heaver, Jack Duffin, Andy Wigmore and Nigel Farage as well as Farage’s head of press Dan Jukes and UKIP comms chief Gawain Towler. Towler tagged the account after a night out with Cottrell and his old UKIP buddies “making up” in East London after his deportation from the U.S. earlier this year. A UKIP spokesman said he believed that the account was genuine.
Another follower of the @GeorgeSCottrell account is Ben Harris-Quinney, chairman of the Bow Group—Britain’s oldest conservative think tank.
He told The Daily Beast he had only met Cottrell a handful of times but he described a man who made a big impression in a world where most senior party apparatchiks are a fairly uninspiring. “He’s quite a larger than life, engaging character. I got the impression that he was a bit of a swashbuckler—keen on adventure,” he said.
Harris-Quinney caught up with him in the pub after his release. “People were very surprised when he was arrested because it was so bizarre,” he said. “But he seemed in good spirits and appeared to have taken the whole thing in his stride.”
Indeed, as Cottrell told The Telegraph: “Despite my unfortunate adventure, and everything I went through, I still maintain 2016 was the best year of my life… Brexit and Trump. Nothing better.”
Also on his small list of followers is the journalist Isabel Oakeshott who was with Cottrell and Farage when the young aide was arrested by U.S. agents in Chicago.
At the time, she was writing the book Bad Boys of Brexit, nominally authored by Arron Banks, which names Cottrell as one of just four UKIP staffers in the book’s “cast of characters.”
Banks was by far the biggest financial backer of Brexit—first donating to UKIP and then donating and lending millions to Leave.EU, and another Brexit campaign group. Last month, it was announced that Britain’s Electoral Commission was launching an investigation into whether or not Banks was the “true source” of that money.
Two weeks earlier Open Democracy UK published an investigation into Banks’ finances—raising questions over his wealth and claiming he had been in some financial difficulty before finding almost £10 million to put towards securing Britain’s exit from the European Union. “The self-styled ‘bad boy’ who bankrolled the Leave campaign appears to have exaggerated his wealth. So how did he pay for his Brexit spree?” the report asked.
Banks—who was a member of Farage’s small Brexit inner circle, along with Cottrell—is a colorful character who seems to enjoy fanning the rumors that surround him including suggestions that he has been working on behalf of the Russians.
The week before Christmas this year, Banks and Andy Wigmore, a colleague from Leave.EU, sent a journalist a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka with the message “From Russia With Love.”
In his account of the battle to secure Brexit, he delights in bringing up the spy scandal his Russian wife was caught up in in 2010. Ekaterina Paderina, the daughter of a senior Russian official, who speaks six languages, used an email address with 007 in it and drives the Banks’ family Range Rover with the number plate X MI5 SPY. Banks, who runs a private intelligence company, even details in his book a six-hour lunch at the Russian embassy with Farage, his wife and the Russian ambassador.
In his book, he describes Cottrell as “posh to the point of caricature and willfully abrasive,” as well as detailing the fact that it was Cottrell who accompanied Farage as he made his way from meeting to meeting at the RNC.
Banks also describes the moment Cottrell was apprehended at the airport in Chicago in July 2016:
“Five FBI officers cuffed him. They swooped the minute he set foot on the gangway… It was swift and discreet, and he was hauled off without explanation. Nigel was stunned… [Cottrell] was wealthy enough to give his time for nothing, and had proven hard-working and loyal. There was nothing to suggest any criminal connection.”
Two days later, Farage and Banks found out why Cottrell had been led away: “Nasty shock today as Nigel got Posh George’s full rap sheet. It’s not pretty.”
What looked like a maximum of 20 years in jail was ultimately reduced to eight months when Cottrell agreed to plead guilty on December 19, 2016.
Officials in the U.S., however, downplayed suggestions that Cottrell had flipped and given key information that might implicate any of his political colleagues as the FBI hunts for a dark money trail connecting Russia, Brexit and the Trump campaign. They said Cottrell would not have been given the lighter sentence and allowed to leave the U.S. if prosecutors were relying on him to give evidence in court.
In the Telegraph interview by a friendly UKIP activist, Cottrell claims that he was lured into the trap while offering to help a customer of his bank. That is entirely inconsistent with the guilty plea he entered in a federal courtroom in Arizona.
His signed declaration said he was snared by undercover IRS-CI agents after proactively offering to help criminals move large sums of money around the world without detection.
“I worked with another individual known as ‘Banker’ to advertise money laundering services on a TOR network black-market website,” he wrote. “I explained various ways criminal proceeds could be laundered—for example, methods to transfer large amounts of cash out of the United States without triggering reporting requirements.”
After his dark web ad attracted the attention of the authorities in March 2014—before he worked for UKIP—Cottrell corresponded with undercover operatives who were posing as drug dealers via the encrypted messaging service Cryptocat before agreeing to travel to Las Vegas to tie up the phony deal.
The federal court heard that Cottrell was extremely well-versed in the intricacies of moving money around. “Cotrel [sic] was surprisingly young—approximately twenty years old at the time—but the IRS-CI agents were impressed with his knowledge of finance, U.S. government procedures, and anti-money laundering laws.”
The question remains, how much of that knowledge was he employing as UKIP’s chief Brexit fundraiser?
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well I guess that is around 5 > 8,000 articles before you start following all the other links 😉
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A senior member of Nigel Farage’s parliamentary group staff in Brussels was known for making trips to the Russian embassy in Belgium and was accused of orchestrating a smear campaign against a critic of the Kremlin, the Guardian has been told.
Two former staffers who worked for Farage’s Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group (EFDD) and who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity said a senior member of the group’s staff, a native of Malta named Kevin Ellul Bonici, was known to have a relationship with the Russian embassy.
Ellul Bonici was part of a small team who worked in the administration of the secretariat office at the EFDD until at least 2015. The EFDD would not answer questions about his current status. Several sources said Ellul Bonici was close at that time to Farage, who relied on the core secretariat staff to help manage the EFDD, a rightwing Eurosceptic group that is still led by the former Ukip chief and comprises 45 MEPs.
According to the accounts of two former parliamentary staffers, in June 2015 a top aide to Farage named Michael McManus, who works for the EFDD, claimed to them that Ellul Bonici was a frequent visitor to the Russian embassy and had a relationship with officials there.
“I was told in June 2015 that this gentleman had a relationship with the Russian embassy in Brussels and that every time he came back from the Russian embassy he would return with a bootload of propaganda,” one former staffer told the Guardian.
The remarks were confirmed by another former staffer who also allegedly heard them from McManus.
Ellul Bonici did not respond to questions from the Guardian.
McManus did not respond to requests for comment by phone, text and email.
Ellul Bonici speaks fluent Russian and was educated in the former Soviet Union in the early 1980s, according to a biographical essay he published about his experience.
“Kevin was part of the secretariat, one of Farage’s senior staff members, and he has always kept them very close,” said Gary Cartwright, a journalist who covers the EU parliament and who previously worked in Farage’s parliamentary group.
Farage, a leading force behind the vote to leave the EU, has ridiculed the suggestion. He has also denied taking money from the Kremlin. There is no evidence that Ellul Bonici was ever involved in Farage’s pro-Brexit campaign.
Unlike most conservatives in the UK, who have traditionally taken a tough stance on Russia, the former Ukip chief has been a consistent cheerleader in support of Vladimir Putin, whom he once described as the leader he most admired.
Farage also has a relationship with Dana Rohrabacher, a US congressman from California who, according to a recent report in the New York Times, was seen as such a valuable source of intelligence to the Kremlin that he was given a codename.
Farage’s proximity to pro-Kremlin actors was first made apparent in late 2014, after alleged actions by Ellul Bonici became the source of a complaint.
In December that year, the Maltese staffer walked into the European parliament and distributed hundreds of books to members’ pigeonholes without authorisation, according to the results of an internal investigation that was later conducted by the parliament’s security service.
The book was called Red Dalia, a highly critical biography of Dalia Grybauskaitė, the president of Lithuania and Putin critic, who weeks earlier had referred to Russia as a “terrorist state”.
The EU parliament investigated the incident after a Lithuanian MEP named Antanas Guoga issued a complaint. “I was really concerned that books were distributed by the help of the Russians. Russian propaganda issues are very sensitive in Lithuania and the EU,” Guoga told the Guardian.
A confidential 2015 memo by the EU parliamentary security service that was obtained by the Guardian stated that their investigation had found that Ellul Bonici – who was working at the secretariat of the EFDD – and three other men had distributed the books. The men had entered the parliament with Ellul Bonici. One was a Russian and the other was a Polish citizen who was born in Moscow. The fourth person was never identified.
The Guardian understands that the EU parliament did not take further action.
The EFDD said in a statement at the time that it had not authorised or supported the distribution of the books and that the issue would be subject to an internal review and “adequate follow-up”. Ellul Bonici’s wife, who is a Eurosceptic member of the European parliament and works closely with Marine Le Pen, denied in reports at the time that her husband had been involved.
There is no evidence that Farage knew about Ellul Bonici’s alleged relationship with the Russian embassy or that he knew anything about the Red Dalia stunt.
The EFDD would not answer questions about how long he had been employed and whether he still worked for the group.
A report published by Bloomberg in August 2015 said EFDD had said that the culprit behind the book controversy – who was not named in the story – had been sacked.
But the two former EFDD staffers who spoke anonymously to the Guardian said they believed Ellul Bonici was working on the group’s YouTube channel while they were working in Brussels as late as 2016.
A spokesman for Farage in London declined to respond to questions about Ellul Bonici.
Ellul Bonici’s wife, Sharon, told the Guardian: “My husband is a very private person. He does not speak to the press.” She received several emails with questions but did not respond to them.
Rohrabacher, a conservative Republican, has denied being a Russian asset. A spokesman for Farage declined to respond to questions about their relationship.
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#Ukip’s MEP RAY FINCH MISSING IN ACTION. HAS HIS FORMER EMPLOYEE MRS FARAGE TURNED #EU SUPERGRASS?
05TuesdayDec 20
An interesting theory has been passed to us by someone well placed. Recently, we posted that UKIP MEP, Ray Finch, had totally deleted his online presence and nobody seems to know why.
Here is what our source had to say:
“Kirsten was working for Finch, who used to be his [Farage’s] driver, so he knows exactly where his boss used to go and where he was. After the second Annabelle Fuller article came out in the Mail on Sunday, I believe Kirsten realised they had conspired to conceal Nigel’s shenanigans and saw this as a total betrayal from a family friend and a professional colleague. Her fury being expressed as a mother, daughter, and betrayed wife.
“A few weeks ago Ray told Michael Crick that he had half his salary suspended by the EU Parliament. As many people know, the estranged Mrs Farage, was on Finch’s staff a ‘parliamentary assistant’ despite never being invited to come to work in the building.
“It is entirely possible that the recent Anabelle Fuller revelations may have compelled Mrs Farage to cooperate with EU authorities. If that’s the case, who knows what information she may hold – given that she was copied on every UKIP internal email for the last ten years!”
Of course, this is just speculation. But who knows what might happen next in the wacky world of UKIP….
Annabelle Fuller went public on two consecutive weekends about her relationship with Nigel Farage
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Image caption Bob Spink told the court he had collected more than 1,000 signatures in his career
A former Tory MP and UKIP politician has been found guilty of election fraud.
Bob Spink, 69, former MP for Castle Point, Essex, committed the offences during the Castle Point borough council elections in May last year.
A jury at Southwark Crown Court found him guilty of four counts of permitting a false signature to be included on a nomination form for a UKIP councillor.
UKIP agent James Parkin, 38, of Canvey Island, was also convicted.
He was found guilty on two counts of the same charge.
Image caption UKIP agent James Parkin was also convicted
Judge Ian Graham said: “These types of offences are taken very seriously.”
Jurors heard Spink tricked “elderly and infirm” voters into signing the forms in April 2016, without making it clear what the documents were or which party he represented.
The court heard people in Spink’s constituency signed forms believing they were petitions, and having no idea they were supporting the UKIP candidate in the Castle Point council elections.
Spink claimed everything was above board; that residents knew what they were signing; and that he only introduced the topic of the local elections once he had gained their support for his campaign to become a police and crime commissioner (PCC).
Image copyrightPAImage caption Mr Spink told the court he had been involved in politics for 30 years
The pair were found guilty by majority verdicts. They will be sentenced in the new year. Both men were released on bail.
Mr Spink, from Benfleet, Essex, was Conservative MP for Castle Point from 1992 to 1997, and again from 2001.
In 2008, he defected from the Conservative Party and joined UKIP, effectively becoming its first MP.
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Greg Lance - Watkins (Greg_L-W)
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The body of Ann Searle was found dead at their home in Stowmarket Credit: Facebook
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Annabelle Fuller went public on two consecutive weekends about her relationship with Nigel Farage
Ukip-vs-EUkip 