BREAKING: Funder of @Nigel_Farage's Brexit campaign met with Russian embassy officials multiple times & offered multi-billion $ gold deal
New from @peterjukes & me theguardian.com/politics/2018/…
New from @peterjukes & me theguardian.com/politics/2018/…
Businessman @Arron_banks has said multiple times that he only ever had one "boozy lunch" with the Russian ambassador. But the Observer has seen evidence of multiple visits from November 2015-2017 
In the same week that LeaveEU launched its official campaign, @Arron_banks & @andywigmore were invited to the @RussianEmbassy twice...once before the event with Cambridge Analytica's Brittany Kaiser, and once after...
At the second meeting, the Russian ambassador introduced @Arron_banks & @andywigmore to a Russian business with a hot proposition: the opportunity to invest in a multi-billion $ deal to buy 6 gold mines financed by a state-owned Russian bank
The gold deal offered to @arron_banks went ahead on July 5, 2016 - 12 days after the referendum. He refused to give us comment on whether he invested. On July 17, 2016 he tweeted: "I am buying gold at the moment & big mining stocks"
Here's @arron_banks tweeting 24 days after the EU referendum on his recent gold & mining purchases. Were they Russian? Was it the deal that the Russian ambassador introduced him to? Questions, questions...
And here's the man who introduced @Arron_banks to the businessman putting together the deal. The Russian ambassador to London, @Amb_Yakovenko. Here he is named in Mueller indictment of George Papopoulos as intermediary between Trump campaign & Kremlin
NEW! America, note this paragraph, now re-instated: @Arron_banks met with Russian embassy officials on same day that Steve Bannon became Trump campaign manager, August 19. Days later her travelled with @Nigel_Farage to US & met Trump rally at Mississippi rally
