‘They tried every dirty trick in the book to overturn a public vote’

AROUND 18 months ago I found myself interviewed by two officers from the National Crime Agency (NCA) in Bridewell police station in Bristol.

They wanted to hear an unvarnished version of the story that had been splashed over all the media that I was a Russian agent and that Brexit had been bought with roubles.

Crazy as that now sounds! Earlier this year, the NCA cleared me of all allegations and in an extraordinary statement concluded that they found no evidence of any offence or any third party money.

This week the Electoral Commission conceded defeat and in a High Court statement accepted that we had been completely vindicated.

After the successful Brexit result in 2016 it was clear that a lot of people in the media, politics and Civil Service and others were very unhappy with the result.

They tried every dirty trick in the book to overturn a legitimate public vote.

Meanwhile in the US, Donald Trump had won the presidential election and I was photographed visiting him three days after the election and the media went into hyperdrive.

Almost straight away the US media started the story about Russian involvement in the US election which led to the Mueller investigation.

And then the British media wanted to run the same story about Brexit.

The Electoral Commission fined us for a number of absurd technical points. It said that we had an overspend of £58,000 out of a total of £11million because we hired people via an agency rather than directly and they added thevat and a management charge.

If we had hired them directly we would have underspent by £200,000.

Our spending return had been independently audited by external auditors but the Electoral Commission referred the matter to the Metropolitan Police for criminal charges against our CEO.

She was exonerated completely but endured massive negative media coverage and some real stress in her life.

The most shocking aspect was a collection of MPS who used parliamentary privilege to make allegations against me with no fear of legal action.

The NCA looked at all our bank records and concluded the money came from me.

The court litigation is over but I will be writing to Julian Knight, the new Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee chairman, with a detailed submission of the events of the last 18 months. Only Parliament has the power to get to the bottom of this.

I believe we were batting for Britain and won a victory that will change the course of British history.

The pain we endured was a small price to pay for pride and independence of

a nation.