The Banks Files: how Brexit “bad boy” Arron Banks was eyeing a massive Russian gold deal

5 Mar 2019

Millionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks eagerly pursued a multibillion-pound gold deal brought to him by a Russian oligarch with links to the Kremlin just months before the EU referendum, Channel 4 News can reveal.

Business associates of the self-styled “bad boy of Brexit” offered to oversee a plan to create a massive new Russian gold company, and tried to arrange a personal meeting in Moscow with key players from a state-owned Russian bank.

Mr Banks has denied that he sought to pursue investments in Russia and played down his contacts with Russian officials.

MPs from the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee said last year that he had given more than £8m to the Leave campaign – the biggest political donation in British history – but had “failed to satisfy us that his own donations had, in fact, come from sources within the UK”.

Banks, who has backed Ukip, Leave.EU and other Eurosceptic groups is now being investigated by the National Crime Agency over the source of his political donations.

A Channel 4 News investigation can reveal for the first time how a finance company substantially owned by Banks drew up a business pitch for a Kremlin-linked oligarch called Siman Povarenkin to merge six Russian gold miners into a single company.