According to the newspaper, finance industry figures have raised at least four suspicious activity reports (SARs) relating to transactions involving senior figures in Reform. It names them as:
- One relates to a £1m donation made to Britain Means Business, a fundraising organisation for Reform UK, before the last general election. Half of the £1m was then transferred by Tice, as director of the company, to Reform UK. Renamed from Leave Means Leave, Britain Means Business is a company that is used to help fund Reform. The £1m seemingly came from the aristocrat and Reform UK donor Fiona Cottrell. In this instance, the Guardian understands bank staff were not satisfied that the funds had ultimately come from her. The NCA has sought help from a foreign partner agency to trace the original source of the funds.
- Two other SARs relate to a loan from George Cottrell to Tice. The loan was made shortly before Tice finalised a property purchase and made a party donation, and was not repaid until after those two transactions were completed, according to sources. George Cottrell is the son of Fiona Cottrell, and is a convicted fraudster, former deputy treasurer of Ukip and close associate of Farage.
- A fourth relates to the £5m gift from the Thailand-based businessman Christopher Harborne to Farage, which was first revealed by the Guardian in April.the
The Guardian says Richard Tice, Reform's deputy leader, has declined to answer any of the questions put to him and, via lawyers, threatened to injunct the paper prevent the publication of these details.
Earlier this week, the same paper the Guardian revealed that the undisclosed and much-discussed £5m gift to the Reform's leader, Nigel Farage, from a cryptocurrency billionaire shortly before the 2024 general election had been reported to the NCA.
As far as Farage is concerned, this week is resembling the scene late in Shakespeare's King John where messengers arrive from all directions with bad news. And it's only Wednesday.
Later. The Guardian has published a second article with more details of the transactions in question.
Personally, I wouldn’t read too much into this. I stopped being a Money Laundering Reporting Officer (every FCA Regulated firm needs one) an about 10 years ago, but even then the Regulators were encouraging us to over-report any “Suspicious Activity” we could identify. They preferred to see too many Reports, rather than too few. This was partly because they could then report to Parliament on how well the regulated firms were behaving, but mainly because it didn’t generate any work for them to do - the reports went to the National Crime Agency (formerly NCIS) for investigation - if any. That’s not to say that all these donations were 100% respectable, just that any transaction from somewhere unusual to a fairly dormant client would have been reported as a matter of course - particularly if it was fairly large.
ReplyDeleteThe penalties for failing to report are draconian and personal so a great deal is reported which is then cleared.
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