Leading Brexit Campaigner Apparently Passed Documents on U.S. Probe into George Cottrell to the Russians
A top Brexit campaigner, who met repeatedly with Russian officials, appeared to share details of the indictment of George Cottrell, a dark web operator working for the campaign.
LONDON—One of the Brexit campaign chiefs appeared to pass documents detailing an American law enforcement investigation to a Russian official, according to a cache of leaked emails.
The papers, which detailed a probe into dark web money laundering, were apparently shared with the Russian embassy in London by Leave.EU executive Andy Wigmore. They concerned the arrest of Brexit financier George Cottrell, who was seized at an airport on the way home from the Republican convention in 2016 where Donald Trump had just been nominated as the presidential candidate.
Cottrell had been at the convention in Cleveland with his boss Nigel Farage, who dined with Roger Stone and met a string of other Republican operatives and elected officials.
The young financier, who led Brexit fundraising for the U.K. Independence Party, was ultimately convicted of offering to launder money across international borders on the dark web before he joined UKIP.
A Daily Beast investigation of Cottrell revealed that he had a series of online links to small banks that were part of the notorious Russian Laundromat scam, which allowed dirty money to be shipped all over the world. A UKIP insider wrote that it was his knowledge of the “murky and complicated world of shadow banking” that “landed Cottrell an unpaid role” in the party.
UKIP officials said they had no idea that Cottrell had touted himself as a money launderer on a TOR black market site until they saw the indictment against him.
Emails obtained by The Observer show that Wigmore passed that indictment to a contact at the Russian embassy.
One of the emails, seen by The Daily Beast, had the subject line “Fwd Cottrell docs — Eyes Only,” it had six attachments. The message was sent to Sergey Fedichkin, a political officer at the embassy, on August 20, 2016, a day after Cottrell appeared in court in Phoenix, Arizona, with the message, “Have fun with this.”
The Russians would have been able to obtain the documents themselves but Wigmore’s willingness to share the papers with the Russian diplomat indicates the depth of the relationship between Leave.EU and the Kremlin’s men.
During his appearance before a parliamentary committee, Wigmore told Members of Parliament that he had never discussed Cottrell's arrest with the Russian embassy. “It never came up. While at the time it probably seemed a big thing, there was so much else going on at the time it just was not an issue,” he said.
Wigmore and his Leave.EU colleague Arron Banks originally claimed that they had no relationship with Russia during their successful battle to take Britain out of the European Union.
In Bank’s diaries, The Bad Boys of Brexit, he admitted that he, Wigmore and Banks’ Russian wife had enjoyed a boozy lunch at the Russian embassy during the campaign but they claimed it had been a one-off.
Banks, who was by far the biggest financial backer of Brexit, has faced a swirl of questions about the origin of the millions of dollars he spent on the campaign. Last week it emerged that he and Wigmore had a lengthy relationship with Russian officials, that included a trip to Moscow. Emails published in The Observer suggested that Banks and Wigmore had also been given the potential opportunity to invest in a Russian gold mine.
It is unclear why Wigmore felt the Russian embassy should be kept in the loop on the IRS undercover agents’ sting which had snared Cottrell. Although he was co-director of Brexit funding for UKIP, Cottrell was not a well-known figure at the time.
Brexit’s biggest funder, Arron Banks, met the Russian ambassador at least 11 times in the run-up to the EU referendum and in the two months beyond, documents seen by the Observer suggest – seven more times than he has admitted. The same documents suggest the Russian embassy extended a further four invitations but it is not known if they were accepted.
It is the third time the number of such meetings has been revised upwards. For two years, Banks insisted his only contacts with the Russian government consisted of one “boozy lunch” with the ambassador.
After the Observer revealed a month ago that he had had multiple meetings at which he had been offered lucrative business deals, Banks told a parliamentary inquiry into fake news he had had “two or three” meetings.
Last week, when pressed by the New York Times, he admitted a fourth meeting. But the Observer has seen evidence that suggests there were at least seven more. When questioned about this, Banks offered no response.
The Observer has seen details, and the Sunday Times published an email given to it by Banks, suggesting possible deals were presented at the fourth of these meetings, on 17 November 2015, the same day that the Leave.EU group – which he helped fund – officially launched its campaign.
The document suggests Banks messaged Siman Povarenkin, the oligarch introduced to him by the ambassador, saying: “I’ve chatted to Jim Mellon who is my partner in the bank and we are both interested in looking at how we could help. Jim has extensive interests in commodities.” Banks goes on to say that another business partner will be in touch “to start discussions. I’m very bullish on gold so keen to have a look”. As a postscript, he adds that “Jim knows the ambassador as well!”
Mellon is an Isle of Man-based investor who made his estimated £850m fortune in Russia in the early 1990s. The pair are close business associates, with Banks owning a major stake in Mellon’s Manx Financial Group. Mellon also donated £50,000 to the Leave.EU campaign – even though as a non-UK resident he was not eligible to vote. Mellon’s representatives say that while he recalls Banks referring to African mining interests, they were not of interest.
The New York Times reported last week that Charlemagne Capital, an investment fund founded and part-owned by Mellon, bought a multi-million pound stake in Alrosa, Russia’s largest diamond mining company, with the deal taking place just days after the referendum in June 2016.
Alrosa, a state-owned firm, is now headed by the son of one of Vladimir Putin’s closest advisers, Sergei Ivanov, who has worked with him since his days in the FSB, the Russian secret service. That investment followed an earlier one Charlemagne made in Alrosa in October 2013, when the Russian government sold 16% in the firm, more than half of which was bought by US institutions.
Representatives of Mellon said he learned of the Alrosa deal from a journalist only last week and that, although he founded Charlemagne Capital and, at the time, owned 19% of it, he was a non-executive director, had no role in investment decisions and no knowledge of the acquisition.
They said that it was normal practice for companies to offer investors new investment opportunities. Charlemagne took up one of these on 6 July 2016 with the announcement of a further privatisation of 10.9% of Alrosa in what Interfax, the state news agency, described as an “expedited” sale with shares being sold at “a knockdown price”.
The shares raised $813m for the Russian government but more than doubled in value within the space of a year. Charlemagne began selling its holding in September 2016, according to its annual report. Mellon’s representatives confirmed that he sold his stake in Charlemagne at the same time, adding that he received no personal benefit from the Alrosa deal.
Separately, documents seen by the Observer suggest that Banks and other associates, including his business partner and Leave.EU spokesman, Andy Wigmore – but not Mellon – discussed two gold deals and the Alrosa deal with Povarenkin during January 2016. This was apparently before the potential further privatisation was made public with the first reports only appearing in early February after Putin met the heads of seven state-owned firms.
The Alrosa sale was the first and biggest Russian initial public offering for many years, but others followed, including 19.5% of Rosneft, the state-owned oil firm, less than a month after Donald Trump won the US presidential election.
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