The Tories said they could not find a record of his donations, saying they could only locate a £25,000 gift. He then faced questions because some of his businesses appear to be based in the low-tax jurisdictions of Gibraltar and the Isle of Man.
But Banks’s public relations chief, Bridget Rowe, a former Sunday Mirror editor, released a copy of a cheque sent by Banks to HM Revenue & Customs for £1.865m in February this year.
The cheque supplied by Banks as proof he paid tax in Britain this year. Photograph: Arron Banks
Ukip hopes that the document will help to quell questions about Banks’s tax affairs since he emerged as one of Britain’s most generous political donors on Wednesday.
His money will be used to fund the general election campaign as Ukip threatens to destabilise the three main Westminster parties.
Companies House records, which are supposed to show a comprehensive record of past and present interests of a director, appear to show that Banks has set up 37 different companies using slight variations of his name.
Using the name Aron Fraser Andrew Banks, he was a director of Eclipse Insurance Services but resigned in 1995, records show.
Arron Banks is registered as a secretary of African Compass Trading, which appears to be still trading.
The same company is also registered as having a director called Arron Andrew Fraser Banks who is also still involved in another firm, Vavista Ltd.
Under the name Arron Fraser Andrew Banks he is registered as a former director or former secretary of 34 different companies, but has resigned from all of them.
The first, third and fourth names, according to Companies House records, use the same date of birth but register different lists of companies.
A spokesman for Banks said that he declined to answer questions over his Companies House entries as well as other matters and preferred instead to “correct [the Guardian’s] mistakes in court”.
Banks appeared to come from nowhere last week when a press release from the anti-federalist party announced that a major Tory donor had defected, following the defections of the MPs Mark Reckless and Douglas Carswell.
The businessman who had made his fortune from insurance announced a tenfold increase in his planned donation to Ukip – to £1m – after William Hague told the BBC he had not heard of him.
Ukip claimed that he had given £250,000 to the Tories. But from Electoral Commission records, he gave £5,000 under the name Arron F Banks in May 2009 to Thornbury and Vale Conservative Association; and a second payment of £20,000 to Northavon Conservative Association in January 2007.
A Ukip source said that he had also loaned £75,417 to Thornbury and Yate Conservative party through his former company Panacea Finance in September 2007. This loan was registered on the Electoral Commission’s website and has to be paid back in 2022.
However, Companies House records show that Banks resigned from the company in September 2005, two years before the loan was granted. This raises questions over whether he was controlling the firm at the time, or whether he was using the firm as a “proxy donor”.
Banks’s office declined to send a further explanation of how else he had paid the Tories any money.
The Conservatives have also said they can find no record to substantiate Banks’s claim that he was a Tory party official in Basingstoke.
Again, Banks declined to comment.
Interest in Banks increased when it emerged that his Facebook page included photographs of him holding a shotgun and sitting in a red sports car.
Banks, 48, says he is worth about £100m. Friends say that he has a controlling interest in a former De Beers diamond mine in Kimberley, South Africa, and another licence to mine in Lesotho.
He met the media before a black-tie fundraising dinner for a Belize children’s hospital on Wednesday night. One of the dinner guests was Kim Simplis-Barrow, the wife of the Belize prime minister, Dean Barrow.
Rock Services Ltd, of which Banks is a director, had a turnover of £19.7m last year and paid corporation tax of £12,000. The company deducted £19.6m in “administrative expenses”.
The main activity appears to be “recharge of goods and services” with Southern Rock Insurance Company – a part of the group of companies that is based in Gibraltar. Southern Rock Insurance states on its website that it underwrite policies for the customers of GoSkippy.com, which is run by Banks. Because it is based in Gibraltar, there is little information available on it.
Rock Services and Southern Rock Insurance’s ultimate holding company is Rock Holdings Ltd, a company based on the Isle of Man.
Banks dismissed questions about his decision to base some of his firms in the low-tax jurisdictions.
Asked if his companies paid full corporation tax, he said: “I paid over £2.5m of income tax last year so I’m not going to get knocked on that one, thank you very much. I really resented that, by the way. My insurance business, like a lot of them, is based in Gibraltar but I’ve got UK businesses as well that deal with customers and pay tax like everyone else.”
Charlie Elphicke, a Conservative MP and former tax lawyer, said: ‘Everyone knows that companies in tax havens like Gibraltar and Bermuda are often used to help minimise tax. This evidence raises serious questions about Mr Banks’s conduct and consistency of identity.”
ALL MY BLOGS & WEB SITES are clearly sourced to me
I do NOT use an obfuscated eMail address to hide behind
I do NOT use or bother reading FaceBook
I DO have a Voice Mail Message System
I ONLY GUARANTEE to answer identifiable eMails
I ONLY GUARANTEE to phone back identifiable UK Land Line Messages
I do NOT accept phone calls from witheld numbers
I Regret due to BT in this area I have a rubbish Broadband connection
I AM opposed to British membership of The EU
I AM opposed to Welsh, Scottish or English Independence within an interdependent UK
I am NOT a WARMIST
I do NOT believe the IPCC Climate Propaganda re Anthropogenic Global Warming
I AM strongly opposed to the subsidy or use of failed technologies eg. WIND TURBINES
I AM IN FAVOUR of rapid research & development of NEW NUCLEAR technologies
I see no evidence to trust POLITICIANS at any level or of any persuasion
I do NOT believe in GODS singular or plural, Bronze Age or Modern
I value the NHS as a HEALTH SERVICE NOT a Lifestyle support
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial or GBH rape.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial, terrorist, mass or for pleasure murder.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial gross child abuse including sexual.
I do NOT trust or believe in armed police
I do NOT believe in prolonging human life beyond reasonable expectation of sentient participatory intellectual existence
I believe in EUTHENASIA under clearly defined & legal terms
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
Some Background On Ekaterina Paderina & Arron Banks The Tory Backer who switched to supporting Nigel Farage’s Ukip!
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.
Hi,
‘Spy MP’ helped Russian woman in mafia inquiry
Documents show that Mike Hancock involved himself so closely in the case of the second woman that he hand-delivered a letter to her
Daniel Foggo Published: 12 December 2010
Hancock’s parliamentary assistant Katia Zatuliveter is in detention awaiting deportation (Chris Ison)
A Liberal Democrat MP whose parliamentary assistant has been accused by MI5 of being a spy intervened to stop another young Russian woman being deported. She was being investigated by Special Branch detectives over possible links to the Russian mafia.
Documents seen by The Sunday Times show that Mike Hancock involved himself so closely in the case of the second woman that he hand-delivered a letter to her, confirming her permission to remain in Britain. Her husband at the time, whom she had married to stay in the country, has accused Hancock of having designs on his wife.
Hancock’s parliamentary assistant, Katia Zatuliveter, 25, is in detention awaiting deportation. MI5 believes she is an agent of the SVR, the Russian intelligence service.
The scandal has threatened to escalate into a full-blown diplomatic incident, with the Russian embassy insisting she is not an agent, and has raised questions over whether Hancock was compromising himself by becoming overly involved with young, attractive Russian women. Ekaterina Paderina, then aged 25, married Eric Butler, then 54, in 1998 within months of meeting him in Portsmouth, where Hancock is an MP. Butler said he was questioned by Special Branch in 1999.
“There were concerns about whether Ekaterina was in the country for legitimate reasons,” said Butler, now 66 and a retired ship steward.
Another source, who knew Butler and his wife, said he was also questioned by a Special Branch officer about Paderina.
“It wasn’t her specifically that Special Branch were interested in; she was merely a cog in what they were looking at,” said the source. “To put it very bluntly, they were looking at a Russian mafia connection to Portsmouth.”
Butler said he realised shortly after his wedding that Ekaterina had married him only so as to remain in Britain. Despite the marriage, the authorities made attempts to return her to Russia, and the couple approached Hancock for help. Butler said he quickly developed reservations over involving Hancock.
“I could see him looking at her in his office in a certain way,” he said. “One day I came home and found them both in the conservatory, and Ekaterina had her legs positioned in a way which was very provocative and Hancock was leaning forward in his chair. I got angry and told him I would thump him if he didn’t get out.”
Hancock wrote letters on Paderina’s behalf to Barbara Roche, the immigration minister at the time, supporting her application to stay in Britain.
An entry in Paderina’s diary in September 1999, seen by The Sunday Times, stated: “Mike Hancock arrived, we had a chat, he gave me a letter which said that I have been granted another visa for a year. Immediately it was like having a huge weight taken off my shoulders.”
After being divorced by Butler in 2001, Paderina quickly remarried another British man. Paderina, now 37 and with the married name Banks, said she had no knowledge of Special Branch’s interest in her. She denied ever having had an inappropriate relationship with Hancock and said she could not remember a confrontation between Butler and the MP in their house.
Of her relationship with Butler, she insisted their marriage had been “valid” but added: “I didn’t marry Eric Butler for love.”
Asked if her motive in marrying him was to stay in Britain, she said yes.
Hancock denied having behaved improperly with Paderina. He admitted writing letters on her behalf but denied any knowledge of police involvement.
When told of Paderina’s diary entry, he said: “I might have dropped off a letter at their house but I was certainly never in their house. I’m not that stupid.”
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
ALL MY BLOGS & WEB SITES are clearly sourced to me
I do NOT use an obfuscated eMail address to hide behind
I do NOT use or bother reading FaceBook
I DO have a Voice Mail Message System
I ONLY GUARANTEE to answer identifiable eMails
I ONLY GUARANTEE to phone back identifiable UK Land Line Messages
I do NOT accept phone calls from witheld numbers
I Regret due to BT in this area I have a rubbish Broadband connection
I AM opposed to British membership of The EU
I AM opposed to Welsh, Scottish or English Independence within an interdependent UK
I am NOT a WARMIST
I do NOT believe the IPCC Climate Propaganda re Anthropogenic Global Warming
I AM strongly opposed to the subsidy or use of failed technologies eg. WIND TURBINES
I AM IN FAVOUR of rapid research & development of NEW NUCLEAR technologies
I see no evidence to trust POLITICIANS at any level or of any persuasion
I do NOT believe in GODS singular or plural, Bronze Age or Modern
I value the NHS as a HEALTH SERVICE NOT a Lifestyle support
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial or GBH rape.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial, terrorist, mass or for pleasure murder.
I believe in a DEATH PENALTY for serial gross child abuse including sexual.
I do NOT trust or believe in armed police
I do NOT believe in prolonging human life beyond reasonable expectation of sentient participatory intellectual existence
I believe in EUTHENASIA under clearly defined & legal terms
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)
~~~~~~~~~~#########~~~~~~~~~~
For more facts about Arron Banks CLICK HERE or HERE & ALSO HERE plus CLICK HERE & HERE and HERE TOO also HERE 
Ukip-vs-EUkip 