From South Africa with love: Arron Banks, Brexit, the Russians and the SA connection

Banks, who made the biggest ever financial donation in the history of British politics, is being investigated with regard to his Russian connections and the role this played in the result of Britain's 2016 “Brexit” referendum. Apart from the Kimberley mines, one of Banks’ closest associates, James Pryor, is South African-born and acted as an adviser to Margaret Thatcher and FW De Klerk.

A search of Banks’ South African business interests indicates that he is a registered principal, with Pryor, IFP MP Eric James Lucas and Jonathan Ian Banks of New Rush Diamonds Pty Ltd, registered to an address in Kimberley. All four men are also listed as principals for Kophia Diamonds Pty Ltd, registered to an address in Pretoria.

Jonathan Ian Banks (born in the same year as Arron Banks, 1951) is listed by Bloomberg as “in-house counsel/In-House Lawyer for Standard Chartered Bank in Hong Kong. Mr Banks worked in private practice with Lovells, in both England and Hong Kong. He joined Group Direct Limited, later part of Brightside Group PLC as Group Legal Counsel in 2006, where he assisted with the flotation of Brightside and has also done considerable amounts of legal work for SRICL. He joined SRICL and Rock Group in 2013.”

He is also listed as a director of the Southern Rock Insurance Company which along with Eldon Insurance forms the bedrock of Arron Banks’ insurance empire which is now under scrutiny.

There has been ongoing speculation of possible Russian interference or manipulation in the Brexit vote. Banks, who is a close friend of Nigel Farage, former leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), has faced questions in the UK parliament with regard to the Leave.EU campaign, its relationship with Cambridge Analytica and the misuse of data by Leave.EU and other companies connected to Banks with regard to manufacturing fake news.

Leaked emails also indicated that Banks and his partner Andy Wigmore, Leave.EU’s press spokesperson, had had multiple meetings with Russian embassy officials prior to the Brexit vote.

Banks donated £12-million to the campaign which has sparked a determined effort to trace the origins or the conduits of the funding through Banks’ complicated and opaque business structures.

One of these conduits may have been revealed in the Kimberley court papers found during the Channel 4 investigation by Foreign Correspondent Jonathan Rugman.

Rugman said that the papers related to a civil action between Distribution Rocks, a diamond company owned by Banks and its partner firm Supermix. Supermix is being sued for failing to pay R7-million which Distribution Rocks – owned by an unnamed business associate of Banks – says it is owed.

Banks’ business associate alleges that the tycoon travelled to Russia in an attempt to trawl for investments for his struggling mines.

The Channel 4 report quotes from the affidavit in which Banks’ business partner states:

“I was finally made aware in October [2015] that in truth, Banks had been dealing with Russians who contemplated investing in the mines…. I was informed by Banks that he had travelled to Russia and discussed with them the diamond opportunities as well as gold mining opportunities in Russia. He further indicated that he would be meeting with the Russians again during November [2015].”

“The true value of Banks’s claimed ‘significant’ diamond discoveries in Lesotho is questionable, while his insurance business has been propped up by a £77-million cash injection from an unknown source, and people who specialise in using tax havens to protect the secrecy of wealthy clients were taking up seats on the board of one of his companies,” wrote Geoghegan and Ramsey.

“The area around the latest find has already produced some of the world’s most beautiful and clear stones,” Banks told an obscure website that, we discovered, happens to be run by a former Ukip candidate.

“Judging by our initial exploration I am confident it won’t be long before we find similar large diamonds.”

“We found that the area of the ‘significant find’ in Lesotho had produced only a few hundred pounds’ worth of diamonds in the two decades before Banks bought it. Keith Whitelock, a geologist and expert on Lesotho diamonds, told us that it was ‘geologically impossible’ to find commercial quantities of diamonds in the mine.”

“But when we dug into the relationship between Chartwell and the BNP, it turned out that it was rather different to most political consultancy gigs. Rather than the party paying Chartwell for its advice, we discovered that Banks was transferring money to the BNP: at least £65,000, a significant sum in one of the poorest and smallest countries in southern Africa, which has a GDP per capita of just $1,040 (£730).”

“Directors of Banks’s local mining company in Lesotho are also close to business associates of the family of BNP leader Maseribane.”