The agency recently received an extensive archive of Banks' emails and other documents, the sources say, which include descriptions of meetings with Russian diplomats and possible business opportunities in Russia.
At least some of those emails have already been leaked to media organizations in the UK and the US. Banks, who provided loans and donations totalling about $12 million to Leave.EU, the Brexit campaign group he co-founded, has complained to the police that they were stolen.
A spokesperson for the National Crime Agency told CNN it never confirms or denies the existence of investigations. The UK's Serious Fraud Office also declined to comment on whether it had opened an investigation. The Sunday Times of London first revealed the National Crime Agency's involvement last weekend.
In a text to CNN on Monday, Banks's spokesman Andy Wigmore said the NCA had not contacted either of them. "And they are unlikely to, firstly because both UK and US authorities were fully briefed and know the truth -- there is no evidence of any wrongdoing or collusion because it didn't happen so even they know there is nothing to investigate," Wigmore said.
Banks' financial support for Leave.EU in the runup to the 2016 vote made him the biggest individual donor in British political history. The group won the endorsement of the leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage, one of the leading pro-Brexit campaigners. According to the latest accounts of Leave.EU, Banks' loan has not been paid back.
His emails were passed to the National Crime Agency by a third party. Sources have told CNN the documents have also been shared with the UK's domestic intelligence service MI5 and, in the US, with Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee. The committee has been investigating allegations of collusion between people associated with the Trump campaign and Russia, as well as Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election campaign.
Some of the emails, which CNN obtained, discuss meetings between Banks, Wigmore and diplomats at the Russian embassy in London, including with the ambassador Alexander Yakovenko in 2015 and 2016.
The cache of emails reveal that, before the EU referendum in June 2016, Banks was offered the chance to invest in several Russian businesses, including the consolidation of Russian gold mines and a sale of shares in the country's largest diamond mine company, Alrosa.
In one email sent to the Russian mining magnate Siman Povarenkin in November 2015, Banks said he was "very bullish on gold so keen to have a look." He copied a wealthy business partner and fellow Brexit supporter, Jim Mellon, on the correspondence.
Russian 'Gold Play'
Two months later, Banks wrote to an adviser with experience of Russian business deals, Nick van den Brul. Banks asked whether there was "any chance Andrew Umbers [another adviser] and myself can see you about the Russian Gold Play. I intend to pop in and see the [Russian] ambassador as well."
The following month Van den Brul wrote to Wigmore, saying: "You may have seen that Alrosa, the Russian diamond monopoly, may have been touted as one of the companies which could be privatised. In my view there won't be full privatisation but it could open up some opportunities for Arron through 'partial' privatisation."
Efforts by CNN to reach Van den Brul were unsuccessful.
In April 2016, the correspondence shows Banks was offered an introduction by a business acquaintance to an "adventurous" Russian gold miner seeking capital for a prospecting business in the west African state of Guinea.
Banks has said repeatedly that he never invested in any of the schemes on offer. Wigmore told CNN they had received advice not to invest in any of the proposals. "No deal and no business with any Russian," he told CNN.
But a fund linked to Jim Mellon did buy into the Alrosa offering. Based in the Isle of Man, a tax haven in the Irish Sea between the UK and Ireland, Mellon has long experience of investing in Russia. He held a minority stake in Charlemagne Capital, which successfully bid for shares in Alrosa when the Russian government sold part of the company in July 2016 for some $800 million.
A report in September 2016 by a fund run by Charlemagne noted that "placements of this type often provide a profitable entry point, and diamond producer Alrosa has performed well."
Alrosa's stock price rose sharply in the three months after Charlemagne had purchased millions of shares in the company. Other investment banks and hedge funds had also bought into Alrosa.
A representative for Mellon refused to comment on the record, but CNN has been told that at the time Mellon was not involved with Charlemagne's investment committee and had no knowledge of the acquisition.
Meetings with US officials
In August 2016, fresh from his victory in the EU referendum two months earlier, Farage appeared with Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Jackson, Mississippi, at the invitation of Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant.
Later that year, the Atlantic Council think tank published a report on Russia's influence in Europe, entitled "The Kremlin's Trojan Horses." Widely cited in the media, the introduction to the report claimed that Farage was "unabashedly pro-Russian."
In response, Wigmore made contact with the US embassy in London to set up a meeting between Farage and a senior US official. The goal was to demonstrate that allegations of collusion with Russia were untrue and "to make sure we did not embarrass Gov Phil Bryant and President-elect Trump," Wigmore told CNN.
Wigmore says he was transparent about contacts with Russian officials and had handed over "all correspondence and contacts we had" to US officials. "I met with them on over six occasions," he told CNN.
'Let them investigate'
Leave.EU is already subject to an investigation by Britain's Electoral Commission and has been fined £70,000 (approx $92,000 at current rates) for spending beyond the UK's strict campaign spending limits ahead of the 2016 EU referendum -- a decision it is appealing.
The commission has also opened an investigation into whether Banks and another group he backed -- Better for the Country -- "breached campaign finance rules in relation to donations at the 2016 EU referendum." Better for the Country made donations of £2.36 million to pro-Brexit groups (equivalent to around $3.3 million at the time).
Some opposition lawmakers in the UK want a broader investigation. Stephen Kinnock, a Labour MP who campaigned for the UK to remain in the EU, told CNN: "We need a full-spectrum probe, probably involving MI5 and MI6 given the international dimensions of this." MI6 is Britain's foreign intelligence service.
Kinnock wrote to London's Metropolitan Police, urging it to open an investigation into the source of Banks' campaign funds and potential Russian interference in the referendum. The Metropolitan Police responded, saying it had "not received any referral from the Electoral Commission regarding Leave.EU and impermissible foreign donations."
Banks remains defiant. Asked about the possibility of an investigation by the National Crime Agency, he told UK media: "Let them investigate. All of this just makes me look like an international man of mystery."
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Your usage has been flagged as a violation of our terms of service. For inquiries related to this message please contact support. For sales inquiries, please visit http://www.bloomberg.com/professional/request-demo If you believe this to be in error, please confirm below that you are not a robot by clicking "I'm not a robot" below.Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review the Terms of Service and Cookie Policy.Block reference ID:Read again Brexit-Backing Tories Push May for Answers on Trade Plan : https://ift.tt/2NlvkqVIt was bound to happen. The UK’s plight has been distilled by an East End soap actor. “Arise, the king of Brexit reason,” read one worshipful headline. Danny Dyer, aka “the byword for low-budget, no-quality Brit-trash cinema” (the Guardian), is either the nadir or the summit of the Brexit fiasco. Lest you missed it, he called David Cameron a twat – twice, for double the hilarity – for sitting in Nice “with his trotters up”, while everyone else was left to puzzle out Brexit, “this mad riddle”. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Pamela Anderson and other TV panellists looked on thoughtfully as Dyer spoke, as if presented with a newly discovered theorem of Euclidean geometry. Oh, how everyone clapped and laughed to see such profundities fall from the mouth of a geezer who gets paid for acting like a tough guy on television and in real life, like the time he was an agony uncle on a lads' magazine and recommended a heartbroken boyfriend to “cut your ex’s face, then no one will want her”. Ah, relax there, that was eight years ago. And did you know he voted Leave? Better yet, he voted Leave because he was “f***ing sick of politicians doing f*** all” and wanted to “make these politicians f***ing do something”, as he told the Daily Telegraph in 2016. A manly Leaver then. If there are violent morons out there, steeped in the politics of hatred, what are the chances of them using the Border as a target? In other words the king of Brexit reason, this veritable Professor of Leave, casually used a life-changing proposition as a protest vote, a proposition about which he knew as much as a particularly dense f***ing twat (which the Urban Dictionary defines as “a less offensive version of ‘c**t’ ”). But hey, he’s a gobby geezer who drops the f-word plentifully, like um, nearly everyone everywhere these days, and calls a loathed former prime minister names on live TV. Fearless genius, right? To which the Tory establishment goes “hoorah!” in a homage to freedom of expression in spite of the rudeness and because they say infinitely worse things about each other all the time. The bar has vanished. Bottom line? If the gobby geezers stay focused on Cameron and his trotters, the appendages of all current offenders are safe for now. No mad riddleStill, it’s the patronising edge of the coverage that grates. The politics of Brexit are not such a “mad riddle”, someone might have said, once you move beyond the Sun as a learning resource (which around the same time was editorialising about the Taoiseach as “the snivelling suck-up egging on the playground bullies”). Let’s imagine for an enchanted moment that Dyer – who said he actually wanted to talk about Brexit on the show – had informed himself first. Imagine if he had noticed that last week’s big internal Tory bust-up was triggered by dead-eyed silverbacks arguing over whether big business had the right to speak out about potential job losses from a hard Brexit. Or to put it another way: do geezers such as Dyer have a right to be told plainly by their politicians and media that hundreds of thousands of jobs are on the line ? At another level, might lads to whom cutting up women’s faces is a reasonable response to rejection have a special insight into the mentality that might fancy cutting/shooting up targets on a reinstated border with a heinously violent, divisive history? Or to put it another way: if there are violent morons out there, steeped in the politics of hatred, what are the chances of them using the Border as a target? At a different level, imagine if Dyer had looked fearlessly at Corbyn and asked him why for f***’s sake a party that should be 20 points ahead of a monstrously dysfunctional, chaotic government is actually lagging behind it. That wouldn’t have required a lot of advance preparation other than some genuine courage. These are the comfortable elites whom the Sun, the Murdoch-owned British tabloid, and various other organs of the people, are supposed to afflict Imagine if he extended his reading a little to ingest some nuggets on the Russian election fiddlers; or on Leave hero Nigel Farage, whose apparent concession speech on referendum night allowed a tiny window for hedge funds in possession of the results of private exit polls to rake in hundreds of millions betting on currency movements; or how Farage’s main Leave funder, Arron Banks, is now revealed to have been the lucky beneficiary of at least three investment offers in Russian-owned gold or diamond mines. Hideously simpleIf Dyer were encouraged to inform himself of the hideously simple, overwhelming economic evidence against Brexit, might he pause to wonder why certain wealthy business figures continue to back it? Or why Jacob Rees-Mogg transferred his commercial investment funds to Dublin? Or why Nigel Lawson and many like him (such as Farage’s children, with their German passports) have carefully secured their EU residency permits so their pleasantly mobile lifestyles will continue unimpeded? These are the comfortable elites whom the Sun, the Murdoch-owned British tabloid, and various other organs of the people, are supposed to afflict. Yet they do the opposite, for reasons Danny Dyer would undoubtedly find curious if he were encouraged to start looking. Instead, he is hailed as the sage of straight talk, the prince of Brexit reason, for blaming the clown who called the referendum. In the meantime he poses as much threat to the ravenously ambitious pretenders to 10 Downing Street as to Cameron’s little tanned trotters – which probably explains the sudden coronation. Dear Britain, please let this be the nadir. Read again Kathy Sheridan: Britain, please let Danny Dyer's 'straight talking' be Brexit's nadir : https://ift.tt/2z8AVh1
Brits are sick and tired of Brexit
Businesses need answers on Brexit — and fast.The British Chambers of Commerce released a list of 24 questions on Tuesday that companies are asking about Brexit. With just nine months to go before the divorce, it said the UK government has answered only two. "We are little closer to the answers businesses need than we were the day after the referendum," Adam Marshall, director general of the BCC, said in a statement. "Business patience is reaching breaking point." The business lobby group said that companies don't know whether they'll face new regulations, tariffs or customs checks. It's also unclear if they'll be able to move staff between the European Union and the United Kingdom, or be forced to pay new taxes. The questions range from the fundamental to the practical: "Will my business have to pay mobile roaming charges in the European Union after Brexit," reads one query. These "are the practical, real-world concerns of businesses of every size and sector, in every part of the United Kingdom," said Marshall. Related: Two years in, Brexit is hurting the UK More than two years have passed since Brits voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, but Prime Minister Theresa May's government has not been able to settle key issues within its own ranks, let alone with its EU partners. The two biggest sticking points are how to avoid customs checks for goods moving between Britain and the European Union, and how to handle the border between Northern Ireland (part of Britain) and Ireland (part of the European Union). May will try to make progress on these issues — and iron out deep divisions within her party — at a meeting of top government officials on Friday. The European Union is also pushing May to speed up the process. At a summit held last week, EU leaders called for "realistic and workable" proposals from the United Kingdom. Brexit confusion is taking its toll as the clock ticks down to March 2019. Nearly half of EU business executives have already reduced investment in the United Kingdom following the Brexit referendum in June 2016, according to a survey published last week by law firm Baker McKenzie. Airbus (EADSF) has warned that it could be forced to quit the country if there's no deal on EU trading arrangements. Earlier in June, the head of Britain's top business lobby group said the country's car industry could be wiped out. Here are more of the key questions businesses need answering now:
Your usage has been flagged as a violation of our terms of service. For inquiries related to this message please contact support. For sales inquiries, please visit http://www.bloomberg.com/professional/request-demo If you believe this to be in error, please confirm below that you are not a robot by clicking "I'm not a robot" below.Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review the Terms of Service and Cookie Policy.Block reference ID:Read again Brexit Bulletin: Labouring Over a Second Referendum : https://ift.tt/2KHsgUpBelfast Harbour has said it is not anticipating any "major impacts" on its business as a result of Brexit. It said that given the large amount of intra UK trade through the port, together with processes for handling WTO trade, impacts are "likely to be manageable". The comments came as the harbour reported an increased underlying pre-tax profit of £35m in 2017. The performance was driven by increased port activity and property income. Cargo traffic rose by 3% to 23.7m tonnes of goods. Under its operating regulations, Belfast Harbour retains and re-invests all profits. Future capital expenditure plans include an upgrade of the container handling facilities and a further phase of the City Quays office development. The harbour cautioned that it is facing some challenges from "emerging trade and port user trends". These include reduced coal imports, as it is phased out as a fuel source for electricity generation, and reduced heating oil imports as a result of an expanded natural gas network. Joe O'Neill, Belfast Harbour's chief executive said " As trade in traditional sectors such as coal and refined oil reduce, we will continue to explore new trade opportunities, alongside those in real estate and tradable services. "Our ongoing partnerships with Titanic Quarter and Catalyst Inc. also continue to yield positive results." Read again Brexit: Belfast Harbour not foreseeing 'major impacts' : https://ift.tt/2z4uFa9Philip Stafford in London Cboe Europe, the stock exchange, and TP ICAP, the interdealer broker, plan to set up EU bases to secure access to the trading bloc amid uncertainty over the terms of Britain’s departure next year. Cboe, Europe’s largest market by the value of shares traded, said on Tuesday that it had submitted an application with Dutch regulators to establish an entity in Amsterdam. TP ICAP has chosen Paris for its EU base, and will use it to oversee its other European operations, including those in Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Madrid, according to two people briefed on its plans. Both Cboe and TP ICAP will still maintain their bases in London. However, its iSwap fixed income trading venue, is also set to be regulated in the Netherlands. TP ICAP declined to comment. Amsterdam has emerged as the biggest beneficiary as London-based companies, which have used the UK’s passporting system to access markets in Europe from their bases in the City. Fixed income trading venues Bloomberg, Nex, MarketAxess and Tradeweb have all announced plans to set up hubs in the EU. With less than nine months before Britain is set to leave the EU, the government remains divided over key decisions relating to the single market and customs union. Industrial giants like Airbus have warned about their concerns over the the potentially negative consequences of Brexit. Mark Hemsley, chief executive of Cboe Europe, said the decision to open a base in Amsterdam was partly because of “the distinct lack of clarity on the status we’ll have from March next year.” Read again Cboe Europe, TP ICAP to open EU bases ahead of Brexit : https://ift.tt/2NkknpvTory MPs have been urged to accept a "compromise" customs plan proposed by No 10 or face having a "watered-down" Brexit forced on them by Parliament. Ex-leader Lord Hague said if Brexiteers pushed Theresa May too hard, it would increase the chance of the Commons voting to stay in the customs union. A No 10 source said the "best of both worlds" plan offered the opportunity for friction-free trade with the EU and the scope to strike deals elsewhere. Ministers will discuss it on Friday. The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019, and negotiations are taking place on what the future relationship between the UK and the EU will look like. Ministers have so far failed to agree what type of customs model to pursue. The decision is seen as being key to facilitating trade and to avoiding new border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which is a member of the EU. Friday's Cabinet meeting at Chequers will be followed by a White Paper setting out details of the UK's future relations with the EU, aimed at paving the way for an agreement in the autumn. No details have yet been revealed about how the new proposed customs system will work although a No 10 source has promised it will be a "significant step forward". Tory MPs who want a clean break with the EU have warned that anything less will be a betrayal of the 17 million people who voted to leave in the 2016 referendum. But former foreign secretary Lord Hague, a life-long eurosceptic who campaigned to remain in 2016, has said they should be careful what they wish for. When is a plan not a plan?BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg The immediate problem with the "new plan" is whether or not it really exists. Because while Number 10 says it does, ask other people in government and they are not quite so sure. Ministers who you might have thought would be aware of the detail like - oh, you might imagine - the Brexit secretary had not agreed the lines, before Number 10 made their intervention. And it's said that the reason he has not been involved in agreeing the "new plan" is because it does not actually exist yet. The customs decision expected in some parts of government therefore is what has been anticipated for some time as "max fac plus" - a souped up version of the proposal that originally won the day in the Brexit subcommittee what feels like a lifetime ago - with, you assume, a long lead-in time while the technology is made to work. Baffled? Quite possibly so. But it's perhaps only safe to say that four days before ministers are expected to actually make some final decisions, all is not precisely as you might have expected. In an article for the Daily Telegraph, he said they did not have the numbers in Parliament to force through a "hard Brexit" - leaving the UK without any deal over market access or long-term customs arrangements. "If ardent Brexiteers push too hard, they will end up without their main objective," he wrote. "If there is no agreement this week on a plan for customs arrangements, the Commons will be much more likely to vote in the near future to stay in the customs union in its entirety. "The choice is either to back a compromise plan now or to end up with a more watered-down version of Brexit that would be forced on ministers anyhow." The government is committed to leaving the current customs union but the two alternatives it proposed last year, a so-called customs partnership and maximum facilitation system, are believed to now be regarded as practically or politically undeliverable. The third option now on the table is thought to involve "alignment" with the EU in regulations covering trade in goods but a looser relationship for services. Jacob Rees-Mogg, who chairs the pro-Brexit European Research Group of MPs, has warned that a deal which restricted the UK's ability to make trade agreements with other nations or control migration could not be accepted and may trigger a revolt against the prime minister. His comments provoked a backlash from some fellow Tory MPs, one accusing him of "blackmailing" Mrs May. But amid signs of growing divisions, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson spoke up in defence of his "principled" colleague while Brexit minister Steve Baker said Mr Rees-Mogg was right to air his concerns. Lord Hague said the "sensible middle" in his party would not forgive anything which destabilised Mrs May's position at such a critical time in the negotiations or was seen as "naked" political manoeuvring. "Everyone threatening Theresa May with chaos, revolt, resignations and a leadership election if she does not do as they wish needs to think carefully about what might be the consequences of their actions," he said. The prime minister will meet Dutch leader Mark Rutte on Tuesday although No 10 has insisted that no foreign leader will be given sight of the UK's latest plans before they are discussed at Cabinet. Speaking on Monday, she urged the EU to consider her blueprint "seriously", saying she hoped it would address the "real differences" between the two sides on the issue of the Irish border. Read again Brexit: Don't push PM too far, Tory MPs warned : https://ift.tt/2lT70QG[unable to retrieve full-text content] Your usage has been flagged as a violation of our terms of service. For inquiries related to this message please contact support. For sales inquiries, please visit http://www.bloomberg.com/professional/request-demo If you believe this to be in error, please confirm below that you are not a robot by clicking "I'm not a robot" below.Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review the Terms of Service and Cookie Policy.Block reference ID:Read again How UK Election Rules Allowed the 'Brexit Short' : https://ift.tt/2lO4afH |
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