The Brexit backer with Russian ties
Arron Banks patiently explains that he really doesn’t give a hoot.
The 52-year-old millionaire insurance mogul — with a passion for offroad car rallies around Kenya, gin and tonics, and Brexit politician Nigel Farage — was the main bankroller of the 2016 campaign for Britain to leave the European Union.
That campaign made him the largest political donor in British history — and he made history because his side won.
Banks and his inner circle now find themselves under the transatlantic microscope, of at least peripheral interest to the Robert Mueller investigation and subjects of inquiries by the British Electoral Commission, the Information Commissioner’s Office and a parliamentary select committee, all investigating Russian interference, fake news, spending irregularities and data misuse in the Brexit campaign. All a witch hunt, Banks says.
US congressional investigators are now in possession of thousands of emails and texts generated by Banks and his Brexiteers — documents that were stolen, says Banks; documents that were leaked by whistleblowers, say British journalists.
Congressman Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he has pressing questions about whether Banks and his associates “served as a conduit of information to and from the Russians on behalf of the Trump campaign.” Bring it on, Banks says.
The clubby, moneyed, wily, cricket-mad conservative compares his insurgency, favourably, to the Viet Cong. He admires guerrillas, disrupters and Donald Trump.
Banks said he did indeed meet with the Russian Ambassador in London at least four times. They got drunk together. They texted. First names. The ambassador tried to hook Banks up with a deal to consolidate Russian gold mines. Later the Russians dangled a diamond deal.
“So what?” Banks shrugged. He took a look, he said. He’s a businessman. He has a stake in diamond mines in South Africa and a uranium mine in Niger. But, he insists, he didn’t do any deals with the Russians.
Banks has been to Trump Tower with Farage and Brexit spokesman Andy Wigmore. They were the first foreign delegation to get a meeting with the President-elect in November 2016. Wigmore said he believes Trump will turn out to be “the greatest president in American history.” Banks nodded his head, yes.
MP Damian Collins, who has been investigating the Kremlin’s political interference for the last two years, said the Russian style is to reach out to fellow travellers with shared worldviews — they see a person who is a disrupter and try to help that person along. Collins said that Banks “publicly played down his contact with the Russian Embassy and Russian businesspeople. Clearly, there’s a lot more to it.”
Banks’ Russian wife, Katya, is a former gymnast and model.
Few people in the British political class knew who Banks was in 2014. Then he said he’d give £100,000 to Ukip. Combined with Brexit, Banks said he gave US$13 million. He insists it was all his money — not Russia’s.
The ghost writer of Banks’ book, journalist Isabel Oakeshott (whose emails were the ones that went missing), concluded that Banks and Wigmore “were shamelessly used by the Russians” in a “classic Russian fishing expedition.”