Thread by @MsMariaT

“In 12/18, So African intel officials confirmed to me that Banks, who owns diamond mines, had been the subject of two investigations by the Hawks....” (Hawks being, So African version of FBI).

https://twitter.com/tom_watson/status/1107605872837054464

Further, An American lawyer with knowledge of the Mueller investigation, says BOTH, Nigel Farage and Arron Banks are persons of interest in that inquiry. (First I’m reading of Banks being a POI - anyone have info/link on that? 🤔)

@Klickedy So Africa 🤔

"Banks first came to national attention in Britain in 10/14, when he announced a large donation to UKIP, which was led by Nigel Farage at the time. Until then, Banks said, he'd been a modest donor to the Conservative Party, giving about 200K pounds."

He gave Farage a 1M pounds.

Banks was a character witness for a paedophile who ended up being convicted.

OKAY...moving on....

"...I noticed that Banks pronounces “Kenya” with a long “e”—a pronunciation, still used by some white Kenyans, that was customary before Kenya gained its independence, in 1963. Banks denies being racist but admits to being “tribal.”

"In one [of Banks' social media] post, Soros was pictured as a puppet master controlling Tony Blair; the image echoed a Nazi propaganda poster of the nineteen-forties, in which a Jewish man controls Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin with strings."

"In October, three days after a pipe bomb was discovered at Soros’s house in Connecticut, Banks tweeted, “I suppose there are good Jews and bad Jews, then George Soros."

Showing you the stream he swims in.

Moving on...

"He used Trumpian language about the nefarious motives of the “deep state....“Part of the whole Trump-Russia thing, and also with the Steele dossier, it’s absolutely the case that some of those rumors came out of the British intelligence services,” he said.

"[Arron] Banks, who told me that he was expelled from both Crookham Court and a subsequent school for a “variety of offenses,” did not go to college."

Doesn't play well with others.

"In 2016, social psychologists from Goldsmiths, Univ of London, conducted a study of referendum voters, and found that support for Brexit correlated w/“collective narcissism”—a belief in the unparalleled greatness of one’s country—and w/a heightened fear of immigrants."

aka MAGA

"In 9/15, Banks hired the AMERICAN pollster Gerry Gunster as a consultant. Banks has frequently cited some advice that Gunster gave him: referendums are won on emotion, not on facts."

Whoopsies.

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/1082635996527652864

And then these assholes returned the favor, and came here:

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/1082635134442950658

Totes illegal:

https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/994829494157496321

"Accordingly, Leave.EU played heavily on the British people’s concerns about immigration in a way that Vote Leave was loath to do, at least until the end of the campaign, for fear of discouraging moderate voters."

Sound familiar?

Moving on....

"Within two days of the mass shooting at a gay night club in Orlando, Florida, Leave.EU had tweeted a photograph of isis fighters alongside this message: “The free movement of Kalashnikovs in Europe helps terrorists...."

"Vote for greater security on 6/23/16. Vote #Leave.” Accompanying text—“Act now before we see an Orlando-style atrocity here before too long”—made the exploitation of the Florida tragedy explicit."

Does everybody know who Orlando shooter's dad is???

Orlando shooters dad, and former Congresscritter, Dana Rohrabacher. Super-cool fishing bud of Nigel Farage, as you may recall.

Weird.

Moving on...

madcowprod.com/2016/06/13/orl…

"Banks, through his insurance businesses, had call centers at his disposal, and in “The Bad Boys of Brexit” he wrote that he planned to deploy these resources on behalf of Leave.EU. Something close to that appears to have happened."

2/19 "Leave.EU and Eldon Insurance, which is owned by Banks, were collectively fined a 120K pounds by the U.K. Info Commissioner, a regulator who monitors breaches of data privacy, b/c Leave.EU had sent 100Ks of political adverts to Eldon customers."

"Banks had appeared before Parliament and denied that Eldon employees had worked simultaneously on the political campaign—but, months later, he was countered by whistle-blowers."

Issues with truthiness.

"One former employee told the Observer, “I made it absolutely clear that I didn’t want to work on the political stuff. I wasn’t comfortable with it. I didn’t want to be complicit in it.”

Highly unethical behavior of a biz owner.

"Another said “Some of these images were really horrible. The immigrants and refugee stuff. But there were always these urgent requests coming in. You were told to STOP WHAT YOU WERE DOING and do something for Leave.EU.”

Sounds like campaign contributions.

"With days to go before the referendum, Farage unveiled a new ukip poster. The words “breaking point,” in giant red letters, were superimposed on a photograph of a snaking line of dark-skinned immigrants waiting to enter the E.U. "

Subtle.

"A few hours after the launch, the Labour M.P. Jo Cox was MURDERED by a far-right nationalist, Thomas Mair, who shouted “Britain First” as he shot and stabbed her. Farage was pilloried."

Just like his friend, @realDonaldTrump , an inspiration for racist zealots.

"Banks told me that Farage wanted to shelve the new campaign, but that he and Wigmore urged him to “hold his nerve.” Even after Cox’s death, he said, polls indicated that immigration remained “the No. 1 issue, by a runaway margin...”

"Banks told me that there was nothing wrong with the image or with its message. “It was a war,” he said. “ANYTHING GOES.”

Got that?

Anything.

Moving on...

"When Cox was killed, both sides in the referendum battle agreed to a two-day pause in campaigning. But Channel 4 News recently unearthed e-mails from the day after the murder in which Banks instructed Leave.EU’s team to..."

"....keep pumping” and to “up the Spend” on a pro-Brexit Facebook video. Liz Bilney, Leave.EU’s C.E.O., agreed, noting that, with active campaigning halted, the video “could get a lot of take up.” Banks replied, “Exactly—press it HARDER.”

😳

"By having an official and unofficial Leave campaign, there was the ability to offer a respectable (sovereignty) and less respectable (migrant scum) argument simultaneously.”

"[Banks's] main office is in Bristol, and his best-known brand is GoSkippy, a company that promotes itself as offering “first-class insurance at the most competitive prices.” In 2017, the Sunday Times Rich List estimated Banks’s fortune to be about 250M pounds..."

"The Finc'l Times and others have suggested that this assessment is TOO HIGH, but it’s hard to get a clear picture of Banks’s biz dealings, because many of his firms are based in such “secrecy jurisdictions” as Gibraltar, the Isle of Man, and Bermuda."

Lying about wealth?

"Banks’s biggest windfall appears to have come in 2014, when he sold an insurance company called Brightside, receiving about twenty-two million pounds for his shares. Other Banks businesses have run into trouble."

"In 2013, Southern Rock, an insurance underwriter based in Gibraltar, was found by the local regulator to be operating with insufficient capital reserves. Since then, Banks and other shareholders have been compelled to refinance Southern Rock with many tens of millions of pounds"

"Banks...put more than 40M pounds into Southern Rock. The co addressed the shortfall...by selling assets it owned to other firms in the Banks group—a strategy that has aroused suspicions among financial journalists, b/c such transactions are sometimes used...for $$$ laundering"🚩

A $$$ laundering expert, quoted:

“red flags do pop out all over the place.” The arrangement to refi Southern Rock forms part of a pattern...that seems to make little finc'l sense. “There appears, from an outside perspective, to be an attempt...to conjure value from thin air,”

"In 1998, Banks divorced Caroline, and three years later he married Ekaterina (Katya) Paderina, who grew up in Yekaterinburg, east of the Ural Mountains. In interviews, Banks has recalled meeting Paderina in 2000, at a Britney Spears concert." 😁

The Ru lady's ex-hubby:

"He met Paderina on Portsmouth’s waterfront, where she was sunbathing topless. He was 54/divorced. When he asked her what she did before coming to Portsmouth, she said...she’d been living in DUBAI 🚩 but had been “treated as a...prostitute” and deported."

Official records in the Emirates confirm that she was deported.

Does anyone not find it HILARIOUS that they are all anti-immigrant, yet they MARRY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS?

FRAUDS.

Moving along...

The dumped ex hubby: "recalls that, shortly after the ceremony, Paderina said, “ ‘I do not love you. I am not married to you in Russia. And, if you ever disobey me, you will feel the full force of my father’s connections.’ ” (She does not remember saying this.)"

Banks' wife's father "allegedy" bragged about being RU #MOB:

"When Paderina’s parents flew in from Yekaterinburg for a visit, her father, Evgeny, told Butler that he worked in the “gov't property biz.” According to Butler, he also boasted “about his connections w/the RU Mafia.”

AHEM: 😁

"One day,[the ex hubby] was surprised by a visit from police officers at the Special Branch, which is concerned with national security and intelligence. They questioned him about his wife’s daily activities and promised to return again."

"Later, Butler told me, the officers informed him that Paderina was depositing significant sums of money in private bank accounts. In 1999, he filed for divorce. Paderina attacked him with a lamp and was charged with assault."

Classy, RU #Mob

"While Paderina’s marriage to Butler was ending, she learned that she was in danger of being deported from the U.K. She asked the local M.P., Mike Hancock, for help. They began spending time together; Butler accused them of having an affair. "

"Hancock’s colleagues in a parliamentary group on Russian affairs became so disconcerted by his “pro-Putin and pro-Medvedev” agenda that they ousted him from a leadership role."

Banks says it was no biggie, she had merely: "...overstayed her student visa, and so she wrote to her local M.P.”

"Boris Volodarsky, who was a former undercover operative for the G.R.U., Russia’s military-intelligence agency...told me that their activities reminded him of “swallows”—young Soviet women who sought to influence “important and promising foreign targets.”

"[Banks] supported Putin’s 2014 military intervention in Crimea, saying that the invaded region was “as Russian as the Isle of Wight is British.” Leave.EU has also posted notably pro-Russian social-media content; it once hailed Putin for “wiping out isis in Syria.”

"I asked Banks how he felt when UK officials accused GRU officers of poisoning...Skripal....He said, “My only reaction to the Skripal thing was that, having been involved in politics and seen the dirty tricks that go on, I’m naturally distrustful of anything I read in the media."

"In “The Bad Boys of Brexit,” Banks recalls that, at a ukip conference in 9/15, he and Wigmore met a “shady character called Oleg,” who was introduced to them as “the First Secretary” at the Russian Embassy—“in other words, the KGB’s man in London.”

"Oleg” is Alexander Udod, an S.V.R. officer who was ejected from Britain after the Skripal poisoning. Volodarksy, the former G.R.U. officer, suggested to me that Udod was also the S.V.R. agent who had met with Ekaterina Zatuliveter in London."

"Banks writes in his book that Udod invited him and Wigmore to lunch with the Russian Ambassador, Alexander Yakovenko, on 11/6/15. They readily accepted. “You get invited by the Ambassador, of course you go!” Banks told me. “Maybe it was a mistake.”

“They weren’t perceived as bad back then,” Wigmore added. At the time, he said, British politicians were “actively trying to get people to invest in Russia.”

LIES. They were already sanctioned in U.S., 2012. Crimea was annexed in 2014.

"In any case, the embassy mtg was a riotous success. In “The Bad Boys of Brexit,” Banks writes that he “hit it off from the word go” w/the RU delegation. Scheduled to last an hr, the meeting became a 6-hour “boozy lunch,” and a bottle of booze allegedly from Stalin.

Banks told me that during the lunch he mentioned owning diamond interests in So Africa. Amb Yakovenko invited Banks to another mtg, later that 11/15, at which a RU businessman named Siman Povarenkin offered Banks a chance to invest in the consolidation of 6 gold mines in Russia"

"After that meeting, Banks wrote an e-mail to Povarenkin in which he said, “I am very bullish on gold so keen to have a look.” Banks relayed Povarenkin’s pitch to several associates, including Jim Mellon, the Leave EU “ambassador.”

Long thread, link back to original article:

The U.K. is in a panic over voters’ decision to withdraw from the E.U. But the pugnacious millionaire whose donations—and Trumpian scare tactics—helped sway Britons has no regrets.

newyorker.com/magazine/2019/…

"according to a recent report by @Channel4News , Banks had been enthusiastic about the gold deal. At his behest, a detailed pitch doc was written, in which Banks and his partners expressed interest in overseeing the project..."

"A subsequent e-mail from one of the partners suggested that Banks and his investors travel to Moscow to meet bankers from SBERBANK—a lender with close ties to the Kremlin—to discuss “financial muscle.”

""Four months before the referendum, van den Brul discussed with Banks the idea of investing in Alrosa, a diamond producer controlled by the Russian state, which was in the process of being partially privatized."

"In an e-mail, van den Brul said that doing so could “open up some opportunities.” Banks didn’t take up this offer, either. (A fund associated with Mellon did invest, but a representative said the fund’s specific investments were made without his knowledge.)"

Uh huh.

😆

Two mos before the referendum, a THIRD opportunity to work w/Russians was presented to Banks: a gold-mining project in Guinea, in West Africa, owned by Ilya Karas, a London-based Ru businessman w/a Belizean passport.

Karas had overseen an unsuccessful oil-infrastructure project in Russia, and he’d owned a bank in Djibouti...

Karas...told me that he met Banks in 5/16, in Bristol. In the end, he said, Banks decided not to invest in the Guinean project."

"...it is curious that at least THREE opportunities with Russians were DANGLED in front of him in the months before the referendum. The Labour M.P. Ben Bradshaw asked Parliament “why the Kremlin would offer Mr. Banks sweetheart deals.”

I'm leaving the quotes out from the liar, in case you're wondering. Saves time. To me, there's no point.

Want to read, here ya go:

newyorker.com/magazine/2019/…

"Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a CAREER C.I.A. officer and a Russia expert who is now at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, told me that Ambassador Yakovenko’s involvement in such meetings with Banks was suspicious."

"Mowatt-Larssen discounted the idea that an ambassador in a key post like London would set up business deals without the Kremlin’s awareness. He said that Russian ambassadors do exactly what “Putin or his closest advisers have asked them to do..."

"If his encounters with Russians in 2015 and 2016 were actually part of an attempted influence campaign, he was at a loss to explain Putin’s motives. “I wonder what the Russians wanted from me?” he asked a reporter from the New York Times."

"Given that Banks had become an ardent Brexit supporter by 2014, it seems unfair to suggest that Russian activities in 2015 and 2016 reframed his views. Yet Banks may not have given a full accounting of his interactions w/Russians."

SCL formed in 2013..

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/926155609086369792

Lord Ashcroft, had been an investor, since 2007 via Haddows Fund:

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/1039998995714560000

Hiya! 🙃

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/1097521875888951296

You got interested in 2014, eh Banksy?

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/975723528237412352

2014. 2014.

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/979388063389425664

An SCL investor, Lord Ashcroft (that Arron Banks and the rest of the Brexiteer shits are close to), he was invested in SCL; SCL signed a contract w/the Russian App guy (who swiped all your FB data), in....2014:

Around THAT time, Banks became interested😊

https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/979352470110564352

"n 2013 and 2014, Banks bought major stakes in four diamond mines in So Africa and a license for exploration in Lesotho. The So African mines were small and largely exhausted. Two of the mines required millions of dollars of investment simply to resume ops. One is still dormant."

"...experts told me that there’s scant chance of his having accrued any legitimate profits from the mines by the time he made his million-pound pledge."

🚩🚩🚩

"So far, the most notable thing that the mines have produced is a vicious commercial dispute between Banks and his former partner in the mines, Chris Kimber."

...

"They'VE been making claims/counterclaims in a So African court....Kimber has claimed that Banks attempted to RAISE MONEY FROM RUSSIANS, and that Banks put “enormous pressure” on him to obtain diamonds that would impress potential investors...before the mines were...operational."

"Kimber claims that Banks and his partners asked him to “find diamonds from third parties.” Banks denies all this, and alleges that Kimber defrauded him of his fair share of the diamonds produced by the mine."

"No proof has emerged that Banks committed crimes in So Africa. BUT Brad Brooks-Rubin, a former State Dept ofc'l who helps run the Sentry, a nonprofit group that monitors corruption in conflict zones, said that the diamond-mining industry “is almost designed to allow laundering.”

Plus, rememba dis (the first tweet in this long-ass thread 😁)?

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/1107762002397544449

"Recently, I spoke to someone with intimate knowledge of the business relationship between Banks and Kimber, who told me that, well before Banks met Ambassador Yakovenko, Banks SOUGHT RUSSIAN investment in his South African mines."

Oopsies, poopsies 💩

"Banks, the source said, also attempted to invest in gold mines in Russia, and had travelled to Moscow to discuss potential deals.

According to the source, Banks had also attempted to hire Bourevestnik, a diamond-screening co that is a subsidiary of Alrosa, the Russian firm."

"Banks told me, categorically, that this wasn’t true, but a former colleague of his said that he had seen Bourevestnik machines being used at Banks’s mines."

This is a toilet-paper long thread - I know - you're not reading 😁- yet I feel like I have a better understanding....

Arron Banks is a garbage individual, who will do business anywhere/with anyone, as long as it lines his own pockets.

Just like his good buddy, @POTUS.

From above:

In 2013 and 2014, Banks bought major stakes in four diamond mines in So Africa and a license for exploration in Lesotho. The So African mines were small and largely EXHAUSTED. Two...REQ'D MILLIONS OF DOLLARS INVESTMENT simply to resume ops.

One is still DORMANT."

"Banks’s claim[ed] in “The Bad Boys of Brexit” that the mines were SO PROFITABLE that they helped prompt his SIZABLE DONATION to UKIP in 2014. The experts told methere’s scant chance of his having accrued any legit profits from the mines [when] he made his 1M-pound pledge." 🚩🧐

"Kimber, in his sworn statement, writes that, in 2015, “Banks was in discussions with Alrosa and had made certain promises to them.” (Alrosa denies this.) Earlier this year, Banks’s fixer in South Africa, James Pryor, told a BBC reporter that Banks had sought Russian investment."

During this period Banks cultivated...politicians in Lesotho, including the PM. Reporting by Ch 4 suggests that they helped Banks acquire mining licenses. Banks admitted...that he placed $$$ in the private account of one of the politicians, but he denies that it was a bribe."

"Thabane recently told the BBC that in 8/14, when unrest forced him and another politician into exile in South Africa, Banks paid for their food and their lodgings...."

"The Kimber affidavit also suggests that Banks was prepared to arrange “mercenary support” for allies in Lesotho, and had even collected guns for this purpose. The former colleague dismissed this as “bonfire talk,” and Banks strongly denied Kimber’s allegations."

I believe it.

Russia was all in So Africa at this time...here's nuclear power plant deal:

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/988552118201081857

LOLZ

https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/963881693827432450

Did I mention Cambridge Analytica was in South Africa?

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/1073016021575905280

"The company’s first involvement in Africa dates to the general election in South Africa in 1994. That election marked the end of the apartheid era and the ascent of Nelson Mandela to the presidency."

voanews.com/a/cambridge-an…

"Banks told me that if any associates of his had collected weapons it was simply to protect his mining properties. “If you own a diamond mine, guess what?” he said. “People are going to raid it.”

"A recent Channel 4 report maintains that, in 2017, an associate of Banks’s offered inducements to a Hawks (THE SOUTH AFRICAN FBI!) officer in return for his opening an investigation into Kimber."

🤣

"Banks told me a story about visiting Mississippi, in 8/16, with Farage, who spoke at one of Trump’s campaign rallies. Trump introduced him as “the man behind Brexit.”

"Banks, meanwhile, has insistently misled British reporters and investigators about the nature of his relationship with the Russians, to the point that it seems fair to wonder if yet more connections will emerge. "

Banks...or Trump? 😁

"And one thing is clear: although Russia does not seem to have achieved anything like the success it did by stealing Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, it certainly attempted to interfere in British affairs."

"The Russians may be pleased to have had their discussions w/Banks exposed: the revelations have compromised him in the eyes of many Britons, sowing greater division in the U.K....`There is a great word to describe it, zapachkat—it means to ‘besmirch,’ or ‘make someone dirty,’"

Bank tried to talk trash on Carole Cadwalladr - yet could not provide the journalist with specific examples of where her body of work was failing.

*Banks. Banks! 😁

"In a leaked 10/24/15 e-mail between Bannon and Banks, the two discussed whether it might be possible to raise funds for the Brexit project in the U.S. before the official Brexit campaign began."

Here's the email:

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/1063852978820407296

"IF, FOREIGN funds had been raised during the campaign, this would have been ILLEGAL. Banks, however, insisted that his discussions with Bannon were insignificant, and that they hardly meant that he and Bannon were friends."

Um, no. They weren't

“We dislike him!” Wigmore added"

Almost done, I swear 😁...

"When Banks, Wigmore, Farage, and others from the Brexit campaign made their 11/16, visit to Trump Tower, Bannon was present. 🚩

Banks told me that, before his party went up to see Trump, Bannon attempted to extract from him a forty-thousand-pound payment." 👀 He lies, so...

"Ostensibly, this request was related to work done by Cambridge Analytica for Leave EU, but, given the context, it seems almost as if Bannon were charging an admission fee to see the President-elect."

Banks told me that he refused, saying that Cambridge Analytica hadn’t performed any services (THEY DID) for Leave EU. This riled Bannon, but Farage placated him, and the Brexit entourage met w/Trump, in his apt, w/o money changing hands."

"I asked Banks what kind of Cambridge Analytica svcs Bannon had offered in 2015...the company was touting itself as an expert in microtargeting voters, w/access to millions of peoples' “psychographic” info. This cache of data was later found to...been improperly culled from FB."

“They put an offer to me that was sort of contemptible,” Banks said. He was asked to give “a million, up front,” for voter-targeting suggestions, which would be based on an algorithm derived from the Facebook data."

🙄

"Cambridge Analytica promised that the results would help Leave.EU “raise six or seven million pounds for the campaign.” Banks looked at me and said, “We turned it down.”

This lyin' MF right here 😁...

Ahem: PAGING MS. BRITTANY KAISER!

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/1097521257287888897

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/1097117490163798017

https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1097088572962889729

Banks says they turned down the help from Cambridge Analytica/Bannon (AGAIN, THEY DIDN'T), because:

"Why? Banks laughed, and the half smile broke into a full one. “Because it was illegal,” he said."

<eot>

🤓✌🏽

Link back to Ed Caesar's original work, here:

newyorker.com/magazine/2019/…

I cut the thread. (Always, on long threads.) Click through here to continue:

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/1107806124424617984

@LincolnsBible 😉😏

Belizean sugar. (h/t @CRGolightly

Also, interesting because...

https://twitter.com/Otto_English/status/837220002252132353

@CRGolightly the Belizean intersect with Russian in London:

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/1107819334317924352

@CRGolightly Controversial Ukip funder and Brexit supporter Arron Banks was Cardiff's Honorary Consul from Belize

walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-new…

@CRGolightly Wiggy (Wigmore), too:

“I am a diplomat for a small country called Belize and we have a couple of issues in relation to bananas and sugars,”

theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/j…