Leave backer criticises ‘witch hunt’ over Russia meetings
The British government said it was examining meetings between the Russian embassy and leading campaigners for the UK’s exit from the EU.
But Arron Banks, a businessman who bankrolled a prominent Brexit campaign, has defended his meetings with Russia’s ambassador to the UK.
Mr Banks, 52, who was co-founder of the Leave.EU campaign, was yesterday questioned by British politicians about his links with Russia amid claims of Moscow meddling in the 2016 Brexit vote.
He was one of the UK Independence Party’s largest donors and met ambassador Alexander Yakovenko three times in 2015 and 2016.
“If the French ambassador called up and asked to meet you for lunch, you’d go. It would be nice,” Mr Banks told the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport parliamentary committee.
“What I’m saying is, we’ve now got a full-scale Russian witch hunt going on but before that, it wasn’t an issue.”
Relations between London and Moscow are at their lowest in decades after the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Salisbury in March.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid said on Monday that Mr Banks’s Russian links were being examined by two ministers from different government departments.
Mr Banks had cancelled his scheduled appearance at the hearing but changed his mind after newspapers revealed over the weekend two further undisclosed meetings with the ambassador.
Reports in the The Sunday Times and The Observer said he and his colleague Andy Wigmore, who also appeared before the committee, met Mr Yakovenko in November 2016 to discuss business opportunities involving gold mines in Russia.
Mr Banks said there was “no definitive evidence” of a conspiracy with Russian officials but admitted to giving them the telephone number for United States President Donald Trump’s transition team before his inauguration.
The millionaire entrepreneur also dismissed claims by whistleblower Brittany Kaiser, who said he had illegally used data of people signed up to his insurance companies Eldon and GoSkippy for the Brexit campaign.
“I like to think I’m an evil genius with a white cap who controls all of democracy, but clearly that’s not true,” Mr Banks said.
Ms Kaiser, from Cambridge Analytica, previously told the committee that data had been misused between Leave.EU, Ukip and Mr Banks’s insurance companies during the Brexit referendum campaign.
Data-mining company Cambridge Analytica, which was accused of illegally harvesting Facebook profiles to sway the US election and the Brexit vote, pitched for work with Leave.EU but Mr Banks said the company was not involved with their campaign.
“We had two or three meetings with them and it became clear to me that, as is true in a lot of politics, there is a lot of sizzle and sometimes not a lot of substance,” he said.
Mr Banks confirmed to the committee that he had been introduced to Cambridge Analytica by former Trump aide Steve Bannon.
The insurance tycoon and Mr Wigmore, Leave.EU’s director of communications, were questioned by politicians about the campaign’s use of “fake news” before the referendum, in June 2016.
In an apparent jovial mood throughout the questioning, Mr Banks said he had been happy during the campaign to “lead journalists up the garden path”.
Mr Wigmore said: “The piece of advice that we got, right from the beginning, was remember referendums are not about facts, it’s about emotion and you have got to tap into that emotion.”
Having promised “fireworks” at the hearing, Mr Banks took regular potshots back at some members of the committee, which he said was made up of Remain voters.
Asked whether he would campaign again in the event of a second referendum, he replied: “If I had my time again I probably wouldn’t have done this in the first place.”
I like to think I’m an evil genius with a white cap who controls all of democracy, but clearly that’s not true
ARRON BANKS
Businessman and Leave.EU co-founder