Concerns about Russia’s election meddling — in the U.K. — reached new heights on Saturday after leaked emails revealed extensive links between one of the top backers of a pro-Brexit campaign and Russian officials. The Observer and Sunday Times of London obtained the some 40,000 emails sent by millionaire businessman Arron Banks, the chief financial backer of U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage’s Leave.EU campaign, and Andy Wigmore, Leave.EU’s director of communications.
The emails show show that Banks had previously undisclosed meetings with Russia’s U.K. ambassador (which were set up by an alleged Russian spy), and had made a previously undisclosed visit to Moscow at the peak of the Brexit campaign. Banks and Wigmore were also offered, at one point, a business deal involving several Russian goldmines that could have been worth a fortune for the men, according to the documents. There is a Trump connection, as the Sunday Times reports that Banks admitted that, months after the Brexit referendum, “he handed over phone numbers for members of Trump’s transition team to Russian officials” — though it’s not yet clear whose info he handed over, or what became of it.
Who’s @Arron_banks? He’s the Bad Boy of Brexit seen here to left of Trump. In depth interview here. “Not a single penny of money has been put into Brexit,” he told me. Though I never actually asked him that..https://t.co/FhCGq0nX93 pic.twitter.com/imvnI3KQiO
— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) 9 June 2018
Banks has donated £1.3 million to the UKIP since 2014, and contributed £6 million to Leave.EU. Both he and Wigmore have denied they played any role in helping Russia influence the Brexit referendum, or that Russia was even trying to do so. Yet starting in 2015, Russia’s ambassador to the U.K., Alexander Yakovenko, worked to develop a relationship with Banks and his associate, successfully inviting them to multiple events as the Brexit campaign was underway. At one meeting, they were introduced to Russian mining magnate Siman Povarenkin in regard to the potential goldmine deal. Another meeting may have happened just three days after Banks, Wigmore, and Farage became the first Britons to meet with President-elect Trump on November 12, 2016. That was hardly their first foray into Trump World, either, as noted by the Observer:
[Yakovenko’s] invitations continued after the [Brexit] referendum during the time in which Banks, Wigmore and Farage began travelling regularly to America to support Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency, according to the documents.