The Bad Boys of Brexit: Connections to Russia, Wikileaks, and Cambridge Analytica
This article covers the connections to top figures promoting Brexit, including Nigel Farage, Arron Banks, and Jim Mellon, had with Russia, Wikileaks, and the controversial British data and political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. It’s is the fourth part in the series, “Cambridge Analytica, Steve Bannon, and the Bad Boys of Brexit on the Trump Campaign.”
While it is not necessary to read earlier entries, it is recommended.
Part one describes the mysterious father company of Cambridge Analytica, Strategic Communications Laboratories.
Part two describes the role right wing activist Steve Bannon and hedge fund manager Robert Mercer played in founding Cambridge Analytica.
Part three describes Cambridge Analytica’s connections to Russia, Israel, and Saudi Arabia prior to its work for the Trump Campaign.
This article is an excerpt from my book, While We Slept: Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of American Democracy, available here.
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The role Cambridge Analytica played in Brexit is the source of enormous controversy in the United Kingdom, both enhanced and distorted by the rancorous disagreement over the Brexit question itself.
Part of the subsequent scandal in Britain had to do with questions regarding British campaign finance and election laws. On these matters, SCL’s diffuse and opaque corporate structure enabled timid British officials to announce that Cambridge Analytica hadn’t violated the letter of the law. Unsurprisingly, there was no comment on whether they had violated the spirit of the law.
There was also a great deal of speculation over what impact Cambridge Analytica’s self-promoted psychographic methodology had over the outcome of the vote, in which Britain opted to leave the EU. While these are worthwhile questions, this section will instead provide a more basic description of the interactions that took place between SCL/Cambridge Analytica and prominent members of the pro-Brexit movement, as well as the their manifold ties to Russia.
Sometime around 2010 or 2011, Steve Bannon was introduced to a flamboyant British conservative activist, Eurosceptic member of the European Parliament and founding member of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) named Nigel Farage.
The introduction was facilitated by Matthew Richardson, a British Lawyer, one-time UKIP party secretary and president of the conservative libertarian Young Britons Foundation (YBF), an offshoot of the Young Americans Foundation, which was partially funded by Robert Mercer, whom Richardson reportedly legally represented in the UK.
Upon their initial introduction, Bannon and Farage immediately found kindred spirits in one another and began discussing the possibility of the establishment of a British Tea Party style populist movement.
Bannon invited Farage to visit him in New York in the Summer of 2012. In March of that year, Andrew Breitbart had died and Bannon had only recently taken the helm of Breitbart, the site that was destined to become a beacon for a burgeoning online movement that would come to be known as the alt-right. While in New York, Bannon introduced Farage to Senator Jeff Sessions, who would later become a key supporter of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
In 2013, the same year he and Mercer formed Cambridge Analytica, Bannon established Breitbart London. Farage was enlisted to write a column for the publication.
In a video filmed in the aftermath of the successful Brexit vote, which was subsequently taken down when British officials began examining Cambridge Analytica, Farage raises a pint and says, “Well done, Bannon. Well done, Breitbart. You helped with this. Hugely.”
Earlier in 2013, then-British Prime Minister David Cameron had pledged to hold a simple yes/no referendum on whether Britain would remain in the EU. Nigel Farage and UKIP jumped on the Brexit bandwagon.
In May of that year, Farage met with the Russian Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko and reportedly discussed the Russia-UK bilateral relationship.
Read my description of Yakovenko’s interactions with Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor who informed Trump campaign foreign policy advisor that the Russian’s possessed emails compromising to Hillary Clinton, here.
The Mail on Sunday has reported that Yakovenko was expelled from the United States in 1986 for being a Soviet Spy. Yakovenko was ordered by the Kremlin to return to Russia several weeks after the article was published.
In 2012, a year before his meeting with Farage, Yakovenko had hosted the launch party of the Conservative Friends of Russia. The organization was later rocked by scandal when it was revealed that it had liaised on multiple occasions with yet another suspected Russian spy, Sergey Nalobin.
Farage has obvious sympathies for, and interesting connections to, Russia.
Since December of 2010, he has been a regular commentator on the Russian state-controlled television network RT. RT’s own promotional literature claimed that, “[Farage] has been known far longer to the RT audience than most of the British electorate.”
According to a report prepared by the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee on Russian influence in British society and politics, among the means by which Russia promotes disinformation and attempts to influence British politics is the “use of state-owned traditional media: open source studies have shown serious distortions in the coverage provided by Russian state-owned international broadcasters such as RT and Sputnik.”
A UKIP-insider told reporter Carole Cadwalladr that RT’s London correspondent “practically lived inside Ukip’s offices. They targeted Gerard Batten first… and then Farage. They loved it. RT would ask them on every week. They’d talk about anything.”
Like Farage, Batten was also a founding member of UKIP.
In March of 2014, a month after pro-EU protests had forced Viktor Yanukovych to flee Ukraine, Farage raised eyebrows with his response to a question raised by GQ magazine about which current world leader he most admired. “As an operator, but not as a human being, I would say Putin.”
He continued, “The way he played the whole Syria thing. Brilliant. Not that I approve of him politically. How many journalists in jail now?”
A year later the Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War exacerbated a refugee crisis that was a central plank of Farage’s pro-Brexit argument. Nor did his claim of not admiring Vladimir Putin “politically” prevent him from echoing Kremlin propaganda in a debate when he argued that the EU had blood on its hands for “forcing” Ukraine to choose between itself and Russia.
Farage had been elected as a “Eurosceptic” Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in 1999.
Since becoming the de facto capital of the EU, Brussels is a hotbed of international espionage. “The Cold War is back,” a Belgian intelligence official told Politico, claiming that the “Chinese, Russians, Americans, and Moroccans have a big presence.”
One of the more intriguing of Farage’s connections to Russia involves the Maltese national named Kevin Ellul Bonici, who served as a senior member of Farage’s staff at the European Parliament.
According to a Farage aide in the same office, Bonici, a fluent Russian speaker born in the former Soviet Union, was a frequent visitor to the Russian Embassy in Brussels, where he had relationships with Russian officials.
“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,” a former staffer told The Guardian.
That same month UKIP MEP’s, including Farage, joined with MEP’s from France’s National Front in an attempt to block a resolution put forward by a center-right MEP from Lithuania named Garbrielius Landsbergis.
The resolution, which passed despite the efforts of UKIP and the National Front, stated that the European Parliament was “deeply concerned at the ever more intensive contacts and co-operation, tolerated by the Russian leadership, between European populist, fascist, and extreme right-wing parties on the one hand and nationalist groups in Russia.”
Later that year, the Farage staffer Bonici, along with a Russian national, a Polish citizen born in Russia, and an unidentified fourth individual, entered the EU Parliament and without authorization distributed hundreds of copies of a book called Red Dalia, a highly critical biography of Dalia Grybauskaitė, Lithuania’s president and a prominent opponent of Vladimir Putin.
Despite reports that he had been fired, Farage staffers claimed that Bonici continued working for Farage uploading his speeches to YouTube until 2016.
Farage and UKIP have also had long standing links to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. In February of 2011, when a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) had been issued against Assange regarding a sexual assault allegation in Sweden, the office of UKIP founding member and MEP Gerard Batten emailed Assange’s lawyer Mark Stephens about “the possibility of meeting Mr Julian Assange.”
Batten reminded him that “UKIP London has been [the] only British political party to openly support Mr Assange[‘s] fight against EAW and his freedom of speech, and we would very much like to continue doing so.”
Farage and other UKIP leaders subsequently met with UKIP donors and denounced the European Arrest Warrant against Assange. Emails later leaked to Business Insider suggest that Farage also spoke with Assange’s lawyer at the event.
Batten promised to table a motion in the European Parliament in support of Wikileaks. Assange and his lawyer Mark Stephens were provided with an opportunity to contribute to the UKIP speeches given in the EU Parliament on the matter.
Stephens was asked whether he or Assange wanted to meet with Batten “in order to discuss bringing out issues in the case.”
Prior to speaking, Batten reached out to Stephens again, asking if there were “any points that you feel I should or should not mention in the few minutes I get to speak?”
At that point, the Nigel Farage-led Freedom and Democracy group within the European Parliament called out what they described as “the possible abuse of the European Arrest Warrant for political purposes.”
Sitting next to Farage, Batten asked “Is the Assange case about the alleged crimes committed or is it about the desire of America to extradite him from a compliant European country?”
The European Parliament ultimately refused the motion, and Batten was later on RT referring to any attempted extradition of Assange as “legalized kidnap”.
Batten attended Assange’s 40th birthday party in 2010, and UKIP sources told James Patrick of Byline that Farage was also present.
The Bad Boys of Brexit: Jim Mellon, Arron Banks, and Further Connections to Russia
In the Summer of 2014, Farage was introduced to a British insurance millionaire named Arron Banks, who became the main financial backer of the Leave campaign and a central figure in the Brexit drama.
The introduction was facilitated by Farage’s friend Jim Mellon, a millionaire and Oxford-educated hedge fund manager at various times based out of Russia, Hong Kong and eventually the notorious tax haven the Isle of Man. According to The Telegraph, Mellon donated up to £100,000 to pro-Brexit causes.
Both Banks and Mellon have a remarkable series of connections to Russia.
Jim Mellon earned an immense fortune during the privatizations that took place in Russia during the 1990s.
Mellon has insisted that he was not involved in the investment decisions of the firm most responsible for the Russia deals, Charlemagne Capital.
He was, however, a co-founder, non-executive director and major shareholder in the firm, and Charlamagne wasn’t the only investment house Mellon set up to pursue opportunities in Russia.
Mellon established a firm called Regent Pacific to buy large chunks of Russia’s newly privatized industries. By 1997, Regent Pacific had over $1.1 billion invested in Russia.
Regent Pacific became the second largest shareholder in Uralmash, an enormous machine making plant in Yekaterinburg, the largest city in the Ural Federal District in Russia.
Yekaterinburg is also known as the “gangster capital of Russia.”
Organized crime in Yekaterinburg was intertwined with its status as a major industrial hub, and for decades there had been criminal alliances between state operated factory directors and local organized crime groups.
By the 1990s, when Mellon became a shareholder, the Uralmash plant had been taken over by an organized crime group called the Uralmashskaya.
While the Uralmashskaya later attempted to present itself as legitimate, renaming itself simply as Uralmash, it continued with its criminal activities into the early 2000’s and have, according to Russian organized crime expert Mark Galleotti, “become something more like a club of powerful criminal businessmen, numbering between fourteen and eighteen, who closely coordinate the operation of their respective outfits, maintaining tight discipline but a low profile.”
Regent Pacific also purchased a stake in Lukoil, the same Russian oil behemoth that approached Cambridge Analytica in 2015.
Read my description of Cambridge Analytica’s business dealins with Lukoil here.
Mellon’s Regent Pacific also engaged in a scheme to illicitly sell shares of Russia’s state owned gas company Gazprom to foreigners.
At the time, in order to ensure that ownership over Gazprom remained majority Russian, the Kremlin only allowed a select few shares of the company to be sold to foreigners.
Deutsche Bank, one of the earliest Western financial institutions to operate in Russia, established a parallel market where foreigners could purchase American Depository Receipts that were in fact repackaged shares of Gazprom.
While this market for foreigners operated, the “Russia” shares of Gazprom trading domestically cost dramatically less.
Mellon took advantage of the system by setting up a Russian company that purchased Gazprom shares at Russian rates then turned around and sold them on the international market for a significant mark-up, earning $200 million in the process.
The scheme was ultimately discovered and Gazprom’s board was so upset that Mellon left Russia, worried that he “might end up at the bottom of the Moscow River.”
The Russian economic crisis in 1998 wiped out much of Mellon’s earningings, but did not mark the end of his business involvement in Russia, nor did the ascent of Vladimir Putin to the presidency a little over a year later.
In 2000, Mellon split his firm into Regent Pacific, based out of Hong Kong, and London-based Charlemagne Capital, which continued to invest in Russia. While Mellon maintains that he was not in charge of day to day investment decisions at Charlemagne, as mentioned he remained a co-founder, non-executive director and major shareholder in the firm.
A day after Putin relaxed restrictions on foreigners owning shares of Gazprom on October 30th, 2003, Charlemagne Capital established a company, Novy Neft, in Bermuda that raised $100 million from foreign investors in two weeks to purchase the newly available shares.
The speed with which Charlemagne was able to act has led some to speculate that they may have had inside information about Putin’s decision.
Charlemagne was so successful that they eventually set up another company, Novy Neft II, to continue the scheme.
In the mid-2000s, Charlemagne Capital invested in the Poland-based Central European Distribution Company.
After the company filed for bankruptcy in 2011 in the aftermath of the financial crisis, a third of its debt was written off by the Russian billionaire Roustam Tariko, the owner of Russian Standard Vodka, who subsequently took control of the business.
Charlemagne was able to trade its equity for debt, which enabled it to preserve 83% of its initial investment.
Around this same time, a Charlemagne fund manager described the firm’s practices as investing in “firms whose management is close to Putin.”
Mellon’s Regent Pacific had investments that were connected with members of Russian intelligence.
In 2012, two oil companies based out of Trinidad and Tobago, Bayfield and Trinity, merged to form one company. Andrei Pannikov, a former KGB officer and co-founder of Lukoil, owned 20% of Bayfield, while Regent Pacific was a large investor in Trinity.
Many years earlier, Pannikov had been a student of offshore finance at the Soviet Trade Institute, whereupon graduating he was given permission by KGB’s foreign intelligence chief Leonid Shebarshin to establish the first joint venture allowed to sell oil products outside of the Soviet monopoly, Soyuznefteexport.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Pannikov established Urals Trading in 1991, the first independent oil trading firm in post-Soviet Russia. Pannikov connected Urals Trading with the Kirishi oil refinery in St. Petersburg region. Among the four men who operated the refinery’s trading arm, Kirishineneftekhimexport, was Gennady Timchenko.
According to Catherine Belton, Timchenko is a KGB operative who is believed to have attended the Red Banner Academy with Putin.
Following Pannikov’s partnership with Timchenko, then deputy mayor of St. Petersburg Putin awarded Kirishineneftekhimexport a lucrative contract to sell 100,000 tons of diesel oil as part of a plan to buy food for St. Petersburg through the sale of oil and precious metals. The food never arrived, causing the oil-for-food scandal.
Read my description of Putin’s corrupt tenure as Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg, the oil-for-food scandal, and Putin’s early connections of Eurasian organized crime here.
While there is no evidence that Mellon knew Pannikov, the fact that Mellon had invested in Lukoil, that both were involved in the early privatizations in the Urals Federal District at the same time and that they were involved in business dealings as late as 2012 makes it seem likely that in fact the two do know each other.
All of this also points to yet another extraordinary coincidence that it was Lukoil, of all Russian companies, that had approached Cambridge Analytica.
Mellon connected with Arron Banks, who he would later introduce to Nigel Farage, through his investment in the Isle of Man-based Conister Bank, which Banks had recently purchased through his Brightside insurance company.
Conister was renamed Manx Financial (the name of which may be an amalgamation of Mellon and Banks) and they became business partners.
Banks was eventually ousted from Brightside after floating the company and subsequently being removed by its investors. He then set up a competing insurance broker called GoSkippy, an insurance brand known widely throughout the UK.
Like Jim Mellon, Arron Banks’ shadowy past contains a multitude of unanswered questions and a remarkable series of connections to Russia and its intelligence services.
After being kicked out of boarding school for getting caught selling stolen lead he had “filched” from the school’s roof, he entered the business world without a university education where he got a start in a junior position at Lloyd’s insurance market.
Banks later claimed that after Lloyd’s he worked at Norwich Union, now part of Aviva insurance, and then took a position working for Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway. Both Aviva and Berkshire, however, have denied ever employing Banks.
Regardless, Banks was involved in the insurance business in some capacity as he eventually became CEO of Brightside insurance.
It is in Banks’ personal life that we find connections to Russia. In 2001, Banks married his second wife, a Russian national named Ekaterina Paderina, now known better as Katya Banks.
A linguist who speaks six languages, Katya’s mother worked at a language school and her father, Evgeny Paderin, was described to The Times of London as the “head of government property” in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.
Yekaterinburg is the same city where Jim Mellon owned a stake in Uralmash, the home of the Uralmashskaya and the largest city in the oil rich region where Andrei Pannikov’s export company Urals Trading operated.
Katya’s marriage to Banks was also her second marriage.
Three years earlier, at the age of twenty-five, she had married a retired merchant sailor and divorcée from Portsmouth named Eric Butler. They met when Butler stumbled across Katya sunbathing topless on Portmouth’s waterfront.
Prior to arriving in the UK, Katya had been deported from Dubai where she claims she was “treated like a common prostitute.”
She arrived in Britain on a student visa but by the time she met Butler she faced visa problems and the prospect of being deported.
After a whirlwind romance, Paderina suggested that Butler marry her. When Butler asked if the marriage was about love or a passport she told him love.
After their wedding ceremony, however, Butler explained to The New Yorker that Paderina told him, “I do not love you. I am not married to you in Russia. And, if you ever disobey me, you will feel the full force of my father’s connections.”
When her father Evgeny arrived from Yekaterinburg to visit after the marriage, Butler claims that he bragged “about his connections with the Russian Mafia.”
During their short lived marriage, Butler says that Katya would stay out all night without providing any explanation.
At one point, Butler was visited by officers of Britain’s Special Branch, a unit associated with national security and intelligence matters, who asked him about Katya’s activities and informed him that she had aroused suspicion by depositing large sums of money into various private bank accounts.
Butler eventually filed for divorce and Katya, who appears to have been trained in self defense, was charged with assault after smashing a lampshade over his head. The case fell apart after Butler refused to give evidence.
Friends of Butler’s told The Times of London that a local Russian named Alexander Trifinov threated him on Katya’s behalf and he subsequently fled the United Kingdom.
Despite the assault case against having fallen apart, as Katya’s marriage to Butler was ending she was served with a notice of deportation. She then turned to a local Liberal Democrat MP named Jack Hancock for help. According to Alexander Trifinov, who allegedly threatened Butler, Hancock provided Katya with a council flat to live in.
Butler later accused his soon-to-be ex-wife and the MP of having an affair. Despite Katya’s and Hancock’s denials that this was the case, his later activities suggest that in fact their having an affair was a distinct possibility.
In 2010, the same year his fellow MP’s kicked out of a Parliamentary group on Russian Affairs because of his “pro-Putin and pro-Medvedev” views, Hanock was revealed to be having a four-year affair with his Parliamentary assistant, a young Russian named Ekaterina Zatuliveter.
MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, came to suspect that the Kremlin was targeting Hancock because of his many contacts and access to sensitive documents.
In addition to Hancock, Zatuliveter also had a relationship with a diplomat from the Netherlands and a German NATO officer.
After seeing her interact with an SVR officer in London, British officials came to suspect that Zatuliveter was a member of Russia’s foreign intelligence agency and attempted to have her deported.
She appealed her deportation to a special immigration panel which determined that, “on the balance of probabilities,” that she wasn’t a Russian intelligence officer.
When asked by Ed Caesar of The New Yorker about the Zatuliveter case, the former GRU agent and academic expert on Russian intelligence Boris Volodarsky described the panel’s findings as violating “all logic and common sense.”
Volodarksy further told Caesar that he believed that the SVR “were in this or that way involved in the life and further career development” of both Ekaterina Paderina (now Katya Banks) and Ekaterina Zatuliveter.
Both of them reminded him of the Soviet practice of having beautiful young women, referred to as “swallows,” attempt to influence “important and promising foreign targets.”
Arron Banks and Ekaterina Paderina were wed in 2001 and she became Katya Banks.
Far from hiding her shady past and suspicious connections to Russian organized crime and intelligence, she appears to flaunt them. Her email address contains 007, a reference to James Bond, and the license plate of the Range Rover she drives reads MI5 SPY.
Whenever Banks or his allies are questioned about his wife’s connections in Russia the questions are dismissed as absurd.
In the course of responding to questions from BBC Newsnight about whether some or all of the money that he donated to pro-Brexit organizations came from sources in Russia, Banks left a clue potentially linking him to his wife’s old life in Portsmouth.
After Banks’ team emailed documents to the BBC ostensibly disproving any connection to Russian money, the reporters discovered an email chain buried within the materials in which Banks wrote, “Redact the reference for Ural Properties and any references which include sensitive info e.g. the account numbers that the money was sent from.”
Upon looking into Ural Properties, BBC found that the company owns two flats in Gunwharf, Portsmouth, both notably overlooking a sealane used by a nearby Royal Navy base.
When asked about this, Banks gave no reply.
Arron Banks, Russian Intelligence, and the Money Behind Brexit
Arron Banks emerged as the largest financial donor to the pro-Brexit causes. In 2014, Banks donated £1 million to UKIP. Two years later, the Banks-owned company Better for the Country Ltd (BFTC) purchased £2 million worth of pro-Brexit merchandise which it then donated to the pro-Brexit group Grassroots Out.
In the largest political donation in British history, Banks donated £6 million to a pro-Brexit campaign organization called Leave.EU.
Questions have been raised about how much money Banks is actually worth, and where the money for his donations actually came from.
The media organization openDemocracy conducted an in-depth investigation into Banks’ complex business background and estimated his wealth to be around £21 million, which if true would mean that Banks implausibly donated nearly half of his wealth to political causes.
An investigation by Bloomberg estimated Banks wealth at £25 million, which would still make the size of his donations suspect.
Thus, questions have been raised as to whether Banks was simply a front for the money. Banks’ £8 million in donations to BFTC and Leave.EU has come under the most scrutiny.
The donations came in the form of loans, which in the case of the £6 million donated to Leave.EU was the pro-Brexit organization’s only reported source of funding.
The UK Electoral Commission later found that Leave.EU failed to report these transactions correctly.
While both Banks and Leave.EU claimed that donations came from Banks personally, in fact the money was transferred from a company called Rock Services Limited, a subsidiary of Rock Holdings Ltd, an Isle of Man registered company belonging to Banks.
Rock Holdings Ltd is one of the vehicles Banks used to invest in Manx Financial alongside Jim Mellon.
The UK Electoral Commission ultimately found that it had “reasonable grounds” to suspect that Banks was not the true source of the £8 million in loans and that the involvement of Rock Holdings was impermissible as it was registered outside of the UK in the Isle of Man.
The Commission referred the matter to Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA), which found that in a convoluted scheme, Banks had loaned himself £8 million from his own Isle of Man-registered Rock Holdings, and then instructed its British-registered subsidiary Rock Services to make the political donation on his behalf.
For reasons unknown, and in the view of this writer highly suspect, the NCA decided to ignore the most pressing question of whether Banks was the true source of the donations, but rather narrowed the investigation to focus solely on the legality of whether Banks could loan money to himself from Rock Holdings, which was a shareholder alongside Mellon in Manx Financial, and then have it’s British subsidiary Rock Services make the actual donation to BFTC and Leave.EU.
The NCA interpreted Banks’ actions in this narrow context as legal and then left the matter at that.
The £6 million banks donated to Leave.EU came in three instalments made between March 15th and April 21st, 2016.
A series of events dating back to the Fall of 2015 raise serious questions about Russia’s involvement with Banks and Brexit.
In September of 2015, Banks’ attended UKIP’s annual party convention in Doncaster, a few hours from London. The convention was also attended by Andy Wigmore, a conservative, euroskeptic activist and prominent friend and associate of both Farage and Banks.
Wigmore was half-Belizean who served as a trade envoy for the country at one point. Belize was a former British Crown colony and today is a notable tax haven and financial secrecy jurisdiction.
Arron Banks is an honorary consul to Belize based out of the Honorary Consulate of Belize in Cardiff, Wales.
In a later Parliamentary inquiry, Wigmore discussed his fascinating background. “My dad worked in Berlin during the Cold War in a place called the Berlin Air Safety Centre, which was an organisation that looks after the air corridors. They worked with the Soviets 24/7. My dad interacted with the Soviets. I grew up in that environment in Berlin. I met many of the Soviets; I was fascinated by everything that went on in Berlin during the Cold War… my Dad dragged me out of bed at some ungodly hour to go and watch a piece of history, which was the last spy swap at Glienicke Bridge.”
While at the UKIP convention in Doncaster, Banks and Wigmore met with a Russian diplomat and suspected intelligence officer named Alexander Udod.
In Banks’ memoir, he describes Udod, using the pseudonym, as “a shady character called Oleg [i.e. Udod] we’d met in Doncaster at UKIP’s conference. He was introduced to us as the First Secretary at the Embassy — in other words, the KGB’s man in London.”
Udod hailed from Russia’s far east, where as an undercover FSB agent he worked as an advisor to the governor of the Amur Oblast, located near Russia’s border with China.
Udod reportedly worked closely with SVR, was familiar with the oligarchs and business interests in the region and was tasked with making sure Western businessmen hoping to invest in the region were not spies.
In 2012, Udod was transferred to Moscow, and a year later was sent to London as a diplomat.
In 2018, Udod was expelled from the UK with 22 other suspected Russian intelligence officers after the poisoning of the former GRU agent and defector Sergei Skirpal and his daughter in Salisbury, England.
Before the 2018 incident, Udod met the self-declared “Bad Boys of Brexit.”
During their meeting in Doncaster, Banks, Wigmore and Udod discussed arranging a meeting with the Russian Ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko.
Banks has provided competing accounts of who sought the meeting, in his book he claims that Udod invited them to meet with Yakovenko, while in a later interview Banks said that he and Wigmore requested the meeting. Both later claimed that they were interested in providing Yakovenko with a briefing on Brexit and discussing potential Russian investment in banana plantations in Belize.
On October 10th, Udod emailed Banks informing him the Ambassador Yakovenko “would be happy to invite you for lunch at his residence” scheduled for November 6th. Banks replied that he would be “delighted” to attend.
Before meeting with Yakovenko, Banks and Wigmore had another group to meet with: Cambridge Analytica.
Arron Banks Engages Cambridge Analytica for Brexit
How Banks was introduced to SCL/Cambridge Analytica is also a matter of some dispute. Andy Wigmore told Carole Cadwalladr that Leave.EU’s introduction to Cambridge Analytica came through the British lawyer Matthew Richardson, UKIP’s party secretary who reportedly had represented the American arch-conservative and billionaire Robert Mercer in the UK.
Richardson was also a friend of SCL founder Nigel Oakes.
Read about Nigel Oakes, founder of Cambridge Analytica parent company Strategic Communications Laboratories, and SCL’s connections to Russia, in part one of this series here.
According to Wigmore, Mercer had told Richardson about his new venture with SCL, Cambridge Analytica, and suggested that it could be helpful to them.
Read about how Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer were involved in the founding of Cambridge Analytica in part two of this series here.
In the same interview with Cadwalladr, Wigmore also claimed that Mercer offered Cambridge Analytica’s services for free, but that was later denied by Wigmore and disputed by Leave.EU.
On a Friday, October 23rd, Banks and Wilmore traveled to SCL/Cambridge Analytica’s office in London accompanied by Matthew Richardson as well as Liz Bilney and Chris Bruni-Lowe, the CEO and communications director of Leave.EU, respectively.
They were pitched by Brittany Kaiser.
“The proposal for how we were going to assist the Leave.EU campaign was to undertake the same type of research that we were undertaking in the United States,” Kaiser later told The Guardian.
“That’s psychographic research: understanding people’s personality profiles in order to develop different clusters of individuals — how they saw the world, why they would or wouldn’t be interested in the United Kingdom leaving the European Union and therefore crafting many different communications campaigns.”
“Arron,” Kaiser later wrote in her memoir, “whom Andy [Wigmore] called “Banksy,” was so thrilled with the presentation that he said he was interested in using SCL not only for the campaign but also for the party, UKIP, and for his insurance company.”
Following the meeting, SCL’s chief financial officer Julian Wheatland, and= an employee of SCL shareholder Vincent Tchenguiz (whose potential connections to Eurasian organized crime and Israeli intelligence are explored here), wrote to Banks in preparation for a press conference to announce the launch of Leave.EU, promising to prepare a “short programme of data analytics and creative support” that was “designed to showcase intellectual capability and a data driven approach to campaigning.”
According to Kaiser, the email also requested payment up front.
The next day, October 24th, Banks sent an email to a group of recipients from Leave.EU and Cambridge Analytica that was also copied to Steve Bannon.
The fact that Bannon was copied to the email led Kaiser, who was also copied on the email, to believe that it was Bannon who had introduced Banks to Alexander Nix and SCL/Cambridge Analytica, most likely through his friendship with Farage.
In the email, Banks wrote that he “would like CA to come up with a strategy for fund raising in the States and engaging companies and special interest groups that might be affected by TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership).”
He further wanted Cambridge Analytica to help Leave.EU “connect to people with family ties to the UK and raise money and create SM [social media] activity.”
The next day a senior Cambridge Analytica staffer replied that the company was working on a proposal that would “include our discussed targeted campaigns” and plans for “targeting businesses for support and US-based fundraising strategies.”
In the UK, political donations can only legally be made by individuals on the British election roll or by British-based companies.
According to Brittany Kaiser, in the days after their initial meeting she sought access to whatever data Leave.EU possessed, and apparently it possessed very little.
She contacted Matthew Richardson, who at the time was serving as both legal counsel to Leave.EU and the party secretary of UKIP. Richardson arranged to have UKIP’s membership data, which Kaiser claims that he suggested was “massive,” transferred to Cambridge Analytica.
Kaiser further claims she initially worried about the legality of Richardson’s position as having a role in both Leave.EU and UKIP and making determinations regarding the latter’s data, but took no action to pursue the matter.
According to emails seen by openDemocracy, a Cambridge Analytica staffer (possibly Kaiser) emailed Richardson asking “if you can connect us to Matthew Goodwin, who is the academic that conducted the referendum survey with your members? He should have the raw data from that, which will be very helpful for us.”
“I have already spoken to Matt Goodwin and the data is incoming,” Richardson replied.
When asked by openDemocracy what the UKIP data consisted of, Goodwin said that it referred to UKIP membership survey he had conducted for academic purposes, the results of which he provided to the party, discussed at academic conferences and later used to inform a book.
The next day, October 30th, a Cambridge Analytica employee sent an email to Arron Banks, Andy Wigmore, Liz Bilney, Alexander Nix and Steve Bannon, writing “two members of your data team will be at our offices for an exchange session on Tuesday”.
On November 2nd, the day before the schedule exchange, Wheatland emailed Banks and Wigmore, copying Steve Bannon, regarding “our proposal for Phase 1 support to the Leave.EU campaign” in preparation for an upcoming press conference meant to announce Leave.EU’s pro-Brexit campaign and to, in Wheatland’s words, “showcase intellectual capability and a data driven approach to campaigning.”
Wheatland promised to “meet with members of the UKIP data team tomorrow to understand and share available data and prepare to start analysis”.
UKIP delivered a physical computer tower to SCL/Cambridge Analytica’s London office which contained two excel files.
One contained the party’s membership data and another that contained survey results of attitudes towards Brexit. Cambridge Analytica data scientists divided the Leave community tino four segments: Eager Activists, Young Reformers, Disaffected Tories and Left Behinds. A presentation of the results was put together for Kaiser to present to Leave.EU.
At this point, there was no signed contract between Leave.EU and Cambridge Analytica and no payments had yet been made and Kaiser claims that Alexander Nix had given her permission to deliver the data insights to Arron Banks and Leave.EU in the form of a presentation but not to hand over any actual files or materials until payment came through.
Arron Banks, the Russian Ambassador, African Diamonds, and Russian Goldmines
Four days after the UKIP data had been provided to Cambridge Analytica, Banks and Wigmore traveled to Ambassador Yakovenko’s residence in Kensington Gardens and had what Banks would later describe as a “six-hour boozy lunch.”
Wigmore brought a bottle of Belizean rum as a gift for the Russian Ambassador while Yakovenko, according to Banks, poured them glasses of vodka from a bottle, one of only three, specially produced for Joseph Stalin.
After Wigmore described his experiences with his father in Berlin to Yakovenko, the discussion turned to Brexit, which Banks claims Yakovenko “wanted the inside track on the Brexit campaign and grilled us on the potential implications of an Out vote for Europe. We chose our words carefully but we didn’t mind telling him we think everyone’s in for a shock.”
“We never offered any information to him or any Russian any details of our [Brexit] campaign,” Andy Wigmore later told The Times of London, contradicting Banks’ description of the affair. “We did discuss Trump and [the ambassador] dismissed him immediately, ‘Not a chance he would win’. I remember clearly him stating this.”
Beyond the shifting accounts of the participants themselves, there is no definitive account of what was discussed during the six hours Banks and Wigmore spent with Yakovenko.
Notably, this November 6th meeting was the only meeting with Yakovenko that Banks and Wigmore initially admitted to in public.
Over the course of their discussions that afternoon, Banks told Yakovenko that he owned diamond mines in South Africa, at which point Yakovenko invited him to yet another meeting with a Russian mining magnate named Siman Povarenkin to discuss a deal regarding Russian goldmines.
Povarenkin had arrived in London at roughly the same time as Alexander Udod in 2013. His wife, Irina, had moved with their children into a £11.3 million home in Edbury Square.
Povarenkin had known Alexander Udod from his days working in the Russian far east for the FSB. Povarenkin’s and Ambassador Yakovenko’s wife socialized together in London.
Povarenkin was also known to be a friend of Igor Rotenberg’s whose father, Arkady Rotenberg, was a close friend and Judo partner of Vladimir Putin’s.
In addition to his insurance businesses and partnership with Jim Mellon in Manx Financial, Banks also had shadowy mining interests in South Africa and Lesotho.
Since 2013–2014, Banks had sought influence in Lesotho by currying favor with its National Party, in particular with John Maseribane, a cabinet minister in the ruling coalition government.
After Maseribane was forced to flee the country in 2014 following an attempted coup, the UK’s Channel 4 News reported that Banks went as far as offering to provide mercenary support to ensure his successful return to power. Prior to being awarded a government diamond mining license, Banks arranged for thousands of pounds to be paid to Maseribane.
In 2018, Channel 4 News traveled to the Sebepala mine Banks took control of located in Quting, Southern Lesotho and spoke to several employees who told them that no diamonds had been found in the three years the mine had been operational.
Channel 4 further uncovered an allegation made in a South African court by one of Banks’ former business partners claiming that Banks had traveled to Russia to discuss investment in his financially struggling mining operations.
“I was finally made aware in October [2015] that in truth,” a sworn affidavit from Bank’s business partner read, “Banks had been dealing with Russians who contemplated investing in the mines.”
It continued, “I was informed by Banks that he had travelled to Russia and discussed with them the diamond opportunities as well as gold mining opportunities in Russia. He further indicated that he would be meeting with the Russians again during November [2015].”
“Throughout the early part of 2015 Arron Banks was promising the imminent arrival of these funds,” the affidavit further states. “Construction of operation on the mine sites continued in expectation of the funds, however these funds were not forthcoming.”
It continues, “It has recently become apparent that the funds were in fact raised but were used by Arron Banks in other interests that he has including but not limited to his participation in the funding of Brexit.”
The South African Hawks, roughly comparable to the American FBI, confirmed to Ed Caesar of The New Yorker in a 2019 article that they were investigating Banks for two matters, the first relating to the acquisition of unlicensed automatic weapons during the period of the coup in Lesotho, and the second related to potentially using his mines to launder diamonds from other parts of Africa, a practice known as “salting the mines.”
Britain’s National Crime Agency was later confirmed to be investigating the claim that Banks was sourcing black market diamonds from Zimbabwe. Banks’ partner further claimed that he was “dealing with Russians” and trying “to marry . . . illegally gotten diamonds” with the low output of his own mining operations.
Officials in both South Africa and Zimbabwe believe that Russian intelligence has controlled the underground diamond trade in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare for over a decade.
On November 7th, the next day following his meeting with Yakovenko, Banks sent the Russian Ambassador a text.
“Dear Alexander,” Banks wrote, “Firstly, many thanks for the hospitality. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Beautiful wine and food.” Banks then invited Yakovenko to visit him at his sprawling country home “Old Down.”
Nine days later, on November 16th, 2015, documents suggest that Yakovenko had invited Banks and Wigmore to the Russian Embassy in London for an evening meeting, but it is unclear whether one took place or not.
The next day on November 17th, Banks and Wigore had tea with Ambassador Yakovenko and Siman Povarenkin, owner of GeoProMining, a Russian company with mining interests in Siberia and Armenia.
Povarenkin was also a member of the Business Council of the Russian Ambassador to the UK, other members include Gazprom, Lukoil and SoyuzNeftGaz.
Registered in Cyprus, GeoProMining’s ultimate ownership is shrouded beneath layers and layers of corporate shell companies and investment vehicles registered in either Cyprus or the British Virgin Islands.
31% of GeoProMining is owned by Sberbank.
The four discussed the potential gold mine deal. A seven-slide presentation titled “Russian gold sector consolidation play,” established the contours of the proposal in which Povarenkin’s GeoProMining would merge with “six or seven” competing mining firms to form an $8 billion gold mining giant.
The deal was to be backed by Sberbank, a shareholder in GeoProMining under US sanctions at the time and, coincidentally, the sponsor of Trump’s Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow. Sberbank’s CEO Herman Gref dined with Trump while he was in Moscow for the pageant.
Read my description of Trump’s interactions with Gref and his involvement in the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow here.
The final side in the presentation read, “Sberbank Capital (subsidiary of Sberbank which is N1 bank in Russia) is a shareholder in GeoProMining and it leads to certain opportunities not available to others.”
When the meeting ended, Banks and Wigmore were invited to three cultural events being hosted at the Russian embassy.
November 17th, 2015, was a busy day for Arron Banks.
In addition to meeting with Ambassador Yakovenko and Siman Povarenkin, that very day he, Andy Wigmore, multiple representatives from Leave.EU including Liz Bilney and Matthew Richardson, and several others gathered Leave.EU’s headquarters in London for a meeting that was also attended by Brittany Kaiser of Cambridge Analytica.
At the meeting, Kaiser gave a presentation using data visualizations in which she summarized Cambridge Analytica’s analysis of the UKIP data.
She further provided information on all the data available about the British electorate that could be freely obtained or was available for purchase, which she explained would allow them to construct a database of the entire British electorate
The next day, November 18th, Leave.EU publicly launched it’s pro-Brexit campaign. Banks hosted a press conference sitting besides Brittany Kaiser of Cambridge Analytica, among others.
At the time, Leave.EU was vying with another pro-Brexit organization, Vote Leave, to be designated by the Electoral Commission as the official Leave campaign, which would lead to government funds.
According to Kaiser, Banks wanted her as a representative of Cambridge Analytica to participate on the panel featured at the press conference to highlight the technological sophistication of Leave.EU.
Nigel Farage was also in attendance.
In her public statement, Kaiser said that Cambridge Analytica would be “running large-scale research of the nation to really understand why people are interested in staying in or out of the EU.”
“Very nice to meet yesterday with the Russian Ambassador,” Banks wrote to Povarenkin on the day of the press conference.
He informed Povarenkin that he had passed the proposal on to Andrew Umbers of Oakwell Capital, which he described as “a company I own a substantial stake in.”
Banks continued, “I’ve chatted to Jim Mellon who is my partner in the bank [Manx Financial] and we are both interested in looking at how we could help. Jim has extensive interests in commodities.”
Banks proceeded to say that a business partner of his would soon reachout “to start discussions. I’m very bullish on gold so keen to have a look”.
Banks ended the message saying “Jim knows the ambassador as well!”
Following Povarenkin’s overture, Banks reached out to powerful individuals in the British gold and mining sector. London has long been the leading financial capital for the global mining industry.
The first individual banks approached to discuss the potential mega-merger was Field Martial Lord Guthrie, the former head of Britain’s armed forces under Tony Blair.
In his post-military career in the private sector, Lord Guthrie served as a director at Petropavlovsk Plc, a London-based company with vast Russian mining operations, particularly gold mines.
Curiously, while initially a remainer, Lord Gurthrie switched to the leave side a week before the Brexit vote took place.
Through Guthrie, Banks was put in touch with Peter Hambro, the co-founder and then-director of Petropavlovsk.
Educated at Eton and known by the nickname “Goldfinger,” Hambro met with Banks to discuss Povarenkin’s deal.
“I met with Goldfinger, who said ‘you need to get the Russian bank onside’ — at that point it just fizzled out. Nothing happened,” Banks told The Sunday Times. “[Hambro] was the chairman of the largest Russian goldmining group on the London stock exchange, and all that happened was a meeting in his oak-panelled office, and we said, ‘Here’s the presentation we have been given; what do you think?’”
“And he said the goldmines are all owned by Sberbank, and if the Russians want to do it, they will do it. And I asked him, ‘What do you think?’ And he said, ‘It’s problematic and it’s difficult’, and at that point it dropped away and nothing happened.”
Despite Bank’s claims to the contrary, he appears to have had continued interest in a business deal with the Russians.
On November 24th, Andy Wigmore emailed Alexander Udod, the Russian diplomat and suspected Russian intelligence agent, “Arron and I wondered if we could have a chat with you face to face about our plans to go to Moscow in the next few weeks.”
Meanwhile, in the interim, Cambridge Analytica continued working with Leave.EU.
On December 5th, 2015, CA executive Julian Wheatland wrote to Leave.EU CEO Liz Bilney, “thanks for coming to see us yesterday.”
He continued, “we will make sure that the Target Audience Analysis (TAA) suits the purposes of Leave as well as UKIP and we will try to seed some questions into the survey that will help inform future study of insurance risk profiling.”
Wheatland further suggested that Cambridge Analtyica would “start digital outreach and a program of voter engagement and fundraising,” primarily through Facebook.
“[F]ollowing our discussion yesterday on the way you are using Facebook… it occurred to me that you may like us to take over you (sic) current list-building activity in the interim.”
Despite the fact that no contract had been signed with Leave.EU, Wheatland maintained in internal Cambridge Analytica correspondence that their relationship was soon to be formalized.
“I had a call with Andy Wigmore today (Arron’s right-hand man) and he confirmed that, even though we haven’t got the contract with the Leave written up, it’s all under control and it will happen just as soon as Matthew Richardson has finished working out the correct contract structure between Ukip, CA and Leave,” Wheatland wrote in an internal email.
On December 7th, Arron Banks indicated in an interview with The Independent that Cambridge Analytica was working on behalf of Leave.EU to boost its social media campaign.
Four days later, on December 11th, The Guardian published an article reporting that Cambridge Analytica had violated Facebook’s terms of use by gathering data on tens of millions of American Facebook users without their permission.
At the time, the focus of the article was on Cambridge Analytica’s work in the American presidential race for the candidate Ted Cruz, which will be expanded upon shortly, as opposed to its work for Leave.EU.
It also described, for the first time in public, Cambridge Analytica’s collaboration with Dr. Aleksandr Kogan.
Between this time and the June “Brexit” referendum, the relationship between Cambridge Analytica became ever more ambiguous.
On December 17th, Leave.EU’s head of research Pierre Shepherd sent an email to Cambridge Analytica’s staff asking “do you still plan to come next week?”
It is unclear whether any such meeting took place. Intermittent communication continued between the two parties.
On January 25th, 2016, Matthew Richardson wrote to Julian Wheatland, copying Steve Bannon, apologizing on behalf of Banks and Wigmore for cancelling a meeting and asking “if they can reschedule for Friday” and explaining to Wheatland that “[Banks and Wigmore] would like to talk about using the service and staging the contract, so that the bulk of it is done after the Electoral Commission designation.”
Shortly thereafter in February, Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix wrote: “We have already helped supercharge Leave.EU’s social media campaign by ensuring the right messages are getting to the right voters online.”
That same month, in a hacked and subsequently leaked private Twitter message sent by Arron Banks shortly after Cruz had defeated Trump in the Texas Republican Primary, Banks wrote “I see ted cruz beat trump with the same online election people we use Cambridge analytica. Social profiling and targeted ads work.”
He continued, “We can message clinically to labour , Tory UKIP and all Sorts… We have 20 different messages targeted by psychology profiling SM [social media].”
Cambridge Analytica had yet to be hired the Trump campaign at this point in the presidential race.
There does not appear to be any more communications between Leave.EU and Cambridge Analytica between February and the June referendum in the public record, which, of course, is not to say that no such communication took place.
In the face of investigations for violations of British election law following Brexit, Leave.EU denied having worked with Cambridge Analytica as no contract had been signed.
The UK Information Commissioner later backed this claim as being narrowly legally correct.
According to Brittany Kaiser, however, “[c]hargeable work was completed for Ukip and Leave.EU, and I have strong reasons to believe that those data sets and analysed data processed by Cambridge Analytica … were later used by the Leave.EU campaign without Cambridge Analytica’s further assistance.”
During this timeframe, despite public statements to the contrary, Banks continued pursuing the Russian mining deal.
In January of 2016, Banks wrote to an investment banker familiar with Russian gold and diamond mining operations named Nick van den Brul about “the gold play.”
In the email, which he copied to Alexander Udod, Banks wrote “I intend to pop in and see the ambassador as well,” referring to yet another meeting with Ambassador Yakovenko.
Banks had kept up his communications with Yakovenko, writing to the Ambassador at one point in January, “Andy and myself would love to come and update you on the campaign, It’s all happening. All the best, Arron.”
On January 12th, 2016, Banks’ business partner Andrew Umbers of Oakwell Capital, who Banks had told Povarenkin he had passed along details of the potential mine merger, sent the Russian mining magnate a document entitled “Consolidation of Russian Gold,” which stated that “Oakwell Capital, through its corporate finance arm, would be extremely interested in overseeing the entire project on behalf of its prospective client GeoProMining.”
The document estimated the cost of purchasing the mining companies at $4 billion. “The source of this cash is as yet unclear but it is assumed that would be made available through friends of GeoProMining and provided in concert with Sberbank’s bank debt support.”
The document further stated, “We would therefore recommend a confidential meeting with Sberbank at the earliest possible convenience to understand their strategy and motive.”
Several days later, Umbers wrote to Povarenkin again, asking, “whether you could arrange for us (Arron and I) to meet the appropriate Sberbank decision-maker and perhaps in Moscow if it is appropriate?”
Umbers then pointed out that Sberbank was a lender to the other mining companies in the proposed merger and that Banks wanted to know “the scope of co-operation from Sberbank and “the financial muscle (person/institution) behind the deal.”
Around this time, Povarenkin offered Banks a different sweetheart deal involving the Russian diamond mining giant Alrosa.
Povarenkin explained to Banks that the Russian government, Alrosa’s largest shareholder, was planning to sell a 10% stake in the company. The sale was to be offered to a private group of investors and was expected to raise about $800 million.
On January 16th, a financial advisor writing on Banks’ behalf told Povarenkin that they “not forgotten about your Alrosa project.”
Banks also discussed the potential diamond mining deal with the investment banker Nick van den Brul, who was knowledgeable in the field.
As an owner of diamond mines in South Africa and Lesotho, Banks would have undoubtedly been familiar with Alrosa and its operations.
Since 2013, Alrosa, at the time the world’s largest diamond producer by output, had been conducting geological surveys and mining in Zimbabwe. In 2016, Alrosa briefly lost its licenses due to reforms in the country’s diamond industry.
Bank’s business partner had already accused him in South African court of dealing with Russians and laundering diamonds from Zimbabwe.
As Alrosa had lost its Zimbabwe licenses in 2016 (which it would regain in 2019), it seems possible that the company may have been looking for diamond laundering opportunities.
There is evidence that Banks visited Russia in February of 2016.
On the 10th of the month, Andy Wigmore wrote to a journalist, “Just had word from Arron. He has been delayed in Russia and won’t be back on Friday for the planned interview.”
Documents leaked to the press suggest that Banks met with high level officials from Sberbank.
There is, however, no publicly available information describing who Arron Banks met with or what he did while in Russia.
Unsurprisingly, Banks and Wigmore have given conflicting testimony regarding the trip to Moscow.
Banks told The Sunday Times that his trip to Moscow was a family vacation. “My wife is Russian and we went on a family trip to Moscow, no meetings were had with anyone, we visited the Hermitage Museum and went on a river cruise.”
The Moscow River is mostly frozen over in February and that the Hermitage Museum is located in St. Petersburg.
Banks and Wigmore testified before a UK Parliamentary inquiry that when the latter told the journalist that Banks was in Moscow he was “being mischievous and lying.”
They gave no reason why.
The weight of evidence suggests that Banks was in fact in Moscow, though there is no publicly available information as to who whe met or what he did while he was there.
On March 15th, 2016, Banks donated his first £1 million to Leave.EU, which by April 21st would have ballooned to £6 million in donations.
In April of 2016, Banks was presented with yet another Russian business offer. That month Banks received an offer via an intermediary regarding the sale of a goldmine in Conakry, Guinea, a small, resource rich country in west Africa.
The owner of the mine, Ilya Karas, CEO of the Moscow-based Farafina Gold Group, was described to Banks as an “adventurous Russian,” as well as a “mini-oligarch” and “inveterate entrepreneur,” who “shares your passion for the yellow metal.”
Karas reportedly met with Banks in Bristol in “mid-2016” to discuss a $3.5 million investment into the mine. Karas claimed that following their meeting in Bristol nothing further came of the deal.
When Ed Caesar of The New Yorker asked Andy Wigmore about Bank’s meeting with Karas, he lied and said one never took place.
Three days before the Brexit referendum, Andy Wigmore wrote to Udod.
“Alexander, I hope you are well[.] Arron Banks and I would like to invite you and the Ambassador to 2 events if your [sic] free[.] Firstly, Aaron is hosting a drinks event at the Bombardier pub in Notting Hill from 6pm and we would very much like you to come, small gathering with a host of interesting people. The second event is a party we have in Millbank Westminster from 8:30pm through to 6am in the morning to watch the result of the referendum come in. . [If] your [sic] free we would love to see either or both of you.”
“Andy,” Udod replied, “Thanks a lot for the invitation, sounds exciting!” After explaining that Ambassador Yakovenko would be flying back to Moscow, Udod stated he would join them and told Wigmore he looked forward to “seeing you and Arron there.”
Prior to the referendum, Britain’s domestic security services asked then Foreign Secretary Theresa May for permission to investigate Arron Banks. May, who would later become Prime Minister, quashed the investigation as she felt it was too politically explosive in the lead up to the Brexit vote.
The referendum was held on June 23rd, 2016.
That day, Russian troll accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency tweeted 1,104 messages with the hashtag #ReasonsToLeaveEU.
Read my account of the Russian troll farm the the Internet Research Agency’s activities in the lead up to the 2016 election here.
To the shock of much of the world, voters in the UK voted to leave the European Union 51.9% to 48.1%.
The results were immediately interpreted by Trump and his aides as a good omen that his brand of right wing populism was ascendant.
While Banks didn’t personally pursue any of the Russian gold or diamond mining deals, three weeks after the Brexit vote the Russian government sold a 10.9% stake in Alrosa.
Among the restricted investors allowed to participate in the sale was Charlemagne Capital. Banks’s business partner in Manx Financial, and the man who introduced him to Nigel Farage, Jim Mellon, was a co-founder, non-executive director and major shareholder in the company.
Curiously, between 2017 and 2018, Banks ownership stake in Manx Financial, which he held through the company Rene Nominees (IOM) Ltd, went up from 25.76% in 2016 to 29.1% in 2017.
While there are any number of perfectly innocuous explanations for this, it goes to show that there are any number of subtle methods Banks could have been remunerated for his Brexit donations, including through his diamond mines in Africa.