Brexit backer under investigation
Criminal probe looks at campaign funding sources
LONDON — Britain’s National Crime Agency is investigating a main financial backer of the campaign to get Britain out of the European Union over suspected illegal funding during the country’s EU membership referendum, authorities said Thursday.
The Electoral Commission said British businessman Arron Banks, his group Leave.eu “and other associated companies and individuals” are under criminal investigation.
The inquiry concerns $10.3 million Banks and his companies reportedly lent to a pro-brexit group, Better for the Country.
The commission said it suspects Banks “was not the true source” of the money and concealed its real origins.
“The financial transactions we have investigated include companies incorporated in Gibraltar and the Isle of Man,” said Bob Posner, the electoral watchdog’s director of political finance.
The crime agency confirmed the investigation but said it could not discuss “any operational detail.”
British political parties and political groups are barred from taking money from overseas-based individuals or businesses during electoral campaigns.
Banks said he was confident that a “full and frank investigation” would clear him.
“There is no evidence of any wrongdoing from the companies I own,” he said. “I am a U.K. taxpayer, and I have never received any foreign donations.”
Ever since Britain voted in 2016 to leave the 28-nation EU, opponents of Brexit have raised questions about the source of funding for the “leave” campaign, possible Russian influence on the vote and the role of social-media advertising using data harvested from millions of Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica.
A British parliamentary committee is investigating Banks’ role in the referendum and his meetings with Russian officials as part of a wide-ranging inquiry into disinformation and “fake news.”
Banks denies any wrongdoing. He has accused pro-eu politicians and activists of “trying to discredit the Brexit campaign.”
“I’d like to think I’m an evil genius with a white cat that kind of controls the whole of Western democracy, but clearly that’s nonsense,” Banks told the parliamentary committee in June.