Married Farage, his foxy French ‘friend’... and a très généreux £400,000 EU cheque to Ukip
FORMER Ukip leader Nigel Farage is sharing a secret £4m bachelor pad with an attractive French politician at the centre of a probe into illegal funding of his party.
Laure Ferrari, who is 15 years younger than the married Brexit campaigner, moved in with the controverial British politician last week.
Dressed in tracksuit bottoms, she was photographed outside the grand Georgian house in an upmarket area of London early on Friday morning. Ms Ferrari was seen putting out the bins shortly before Mr Farage left in his chauffeur-driven Land Rover.
Mr Farage last night confirmed that she had been living at his Chelsea house but said it was ‘crackers’ to suggest they were having an affair. He said he ‘knew her well’ but was just helping her out with somewhere to stay.
Ms Ferrari and Mr Farage first met a decade ago when she was a waitress and he got her a job in the European Parliament. Now she is the head of a think-tank accused of breaking rules by diverting public money to Ukip when Mr Farage was its leader. The Eurosceptic and right-wing populist political party is under investigation by Britain’s elections watchdog for allegedly taking £400,000 in dodgy donations from the think-tank and an affiliated political alliance, ahead of the British general election and the EU referendum.
Mr Farage said he was giving Ms Ferrari ‘short-term help’ with her accommodation because she had nowhere else to go and needed money. Asked if he had slept with her, he said: ‘I’m not answering ludicrous questions, like have you ever held her hand, ever had dinner with her.
‘She is someone I have worked with and known well for a long time who wanted somewhere to stay for a week that wouldn’t cost her any money. It’s a working relationship. You can inflate it however you want to.’
Last month Ms Ferrari was also by Mr Farage’s side at a glitzy Washington DC party to celebrate the election of his new friend, US President Donald Trump.
She runs the Eurosceptic thinktank the Institute for Direct Democracy in Europe (IDDE).
That, and a related political grouping known as the Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe (ADDE) have received more than £1m a year from the EU. But they have already been ordered to pay back hundreds of thousands of pounds by the European Parliament, while Ukip faces a fine of up to £20,000 if it is found to have broken British election law.
Mr Farage said he ‘absolutely denied’ claims of wrongdoing concerning any financial link, adding: ‘We are fighting it very hard.’
Ms Ferrari said she had been forced to move out of her own flat after the European Parliament stopped the IDDE’s funding, and said: ‘I have no trustworthy friends in London who could have hosted me. I asked and he accepted. He is just trying to be helpful.’
She, too, denied any affair, saying: ‘You are putting two and two together but it is not as simple as that. I cannot stop people from fantasising. I am not pleased to be in this situation and I am so sorry it is bringing awful things on Nigel’s life and on my life.’
The MoS told last month how Mr Farage was staying in a ‘bachelor pad’ in London on weeknights but he refused to say where it was and denied that he had split from his German-born second wife Kirsten, with whom he has two daughters. When asked about the state of his marriage at the time, he replied: ‘We get by and bumble along, like most people.’
Today we can reveal that his bolthole is a three-bedroom Georgian house, worth an estimated £4m and owned by a businessman, in a quiet Chelsea side street.
And 52-year-old Mr Farage has been sharing it with 37-year-old Ms Ferrari for a week. They were certainly both there overnight on Friday. Mr Farage was dropped off there at 10.40am on Thursday. He later went out and returned at 8.25pm after his talk radio show, entering by the back door.
At 8.03am the following day, Ms Ferrari emerged from the front door dressed in a grey sweatshirt, casual blue jogging bottoms and a beige wool hat. She placed a black bin liner and another clear bag of recycling outside the front wall.
Mr Farage emerged from the back door 25 minutes later and was picked up by a Land Rover.
He returned home at 10pm having spent the day campaigning for Ukip ahead of a key by-election.
Ms Ferrari has previously spoken of how she began working for Mr Farage and fellow Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom after meeting them in the Strasbourg restaurant where she waited tables in 2007. She once told an interviewer: ‘I met these two MEPs and we started talking about politics. The two Brits have no hierarchy and neither of them comes from a political background.’
In June 2013, Ms Ferrari posted on Twitter a link to a newspaper feature asking: ‘Why do more women want to bed Nigel Farage over David Cameron?’
She was originally Mr Bloom’s parliamentary assistant, then head of public relations to a European Parliament grouping led by Mr Farage, and was a candidate for a small right-wing party known as Debout la République (Arise The Republic) at European elections in 2014. The party, since renamed Debout la France, is one of 10 nationalist parties that make up the ADDE group, which was set up in 2014 by Ukip and funded by the European Parliament.
In March 2015, she was elected as executive director for the ADDE’s think tank, the IDDE. The two organisations share an office in Brussels but Ms Ferrari moved to London, setting up a consultancy firm from an address in Clapham.
Ms Ferrari spoke alongside Ukip politicians and other Brexit campaigners at public events ahead of last June’s referendum.
Late last year Ms Ferrari became caught up in the scandal involving Ukip funding ahead of the Brexit poll and the 2015 general election, in which Mr Farage unsuccessfully tried to become an MP. The European Parliament announced that, following an audit, it discovered that the ADDE and IDDE had
Miss Ferrari has tweeted about Farage’s sexiness Farage: Yes, I have got a bachelor pad. No, I’m not leaving wife number 2
mis-spent €534,478 on political parties and election campaigns, much of it benefiting Ukip. European Union money is meant to be spent only on activities at a European level, not on domestic campaigning. The ADDE carried out nine opinion polls, published a report and carried out consultancy services connected to the polling, which ‘breached the rules for European party financing’.
It was told to pay back €172,655 and had another €248,345 grant withheld. It has been claimed that ADDE cash was given to Ukip staff to canvass voters in seats where the party hoped to do well. And the IDDE paid for a poll ‘related to the EU referendum in the UK’.
It was said to have wrongly spent €33,863, including paying for a Dutch referendum advert arranged by Mr Farage. The elections watchdog announced in November that it would investigate Ukip to see if it ‘accepted impermissible donations’ from the two groups.
The watchdog said last night that its investigation was ongoing.