Arron Banks faces criminal inquiry over Brexit campaign

[muriel_volestrangler]

The National Crime Agency has launched an investigation into Arron Banks and other people and groups linked to the leave campaign over suspected criminal offences in the Brexit referendum, it has announced.

It came after the Electoral Commission said it had referred the cases to the NCA over suspicions that a “number of criminal offences may have been committed”, and that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that Banks, the insurance millionaire who backed the unofficial leave campaign, was not the “true source” of £8m in funding to it.
...
The investigation centres on the suspicion Banks was not the “true source” of the £8m of loans made to BFTC, and that loans involved funds from a “non-qualifying or impermissible company” based in the Isle of Man.

The Electoral Commission statement said the investigation would look into whether Banks, Bilney and others involved in BFTC, Leave.EU and associated companies “concealed the true details of these financial transactions”.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/01/arron-banks-referred-to-agency-over-suspected-offences-in-brexit-campaign

Leave.EU's chief executive Liz Bilney said all of the money had come from Mr Banks and he was the "ultimate beneficial owner" of the companies that had loaned it.

As a UK domiciled taxpayer Mr Banks was "completely permissible to donate money to campaigns as he sees fit", she told BBC Radio 4's The World at One.

She denied claims the money had come from Russian sources, saying: "I run the group of companies where the money was from and we don't have any transactions that are from Russia."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46056337

Yeah, sure:

Arron Banks ‘met Russian officials multiple times before Brexit vote’