NO COLLUSION!

The Friends of Russia money laundering group.

I'm waiting for His Lardship to say he never met Arron Banks.

Arron Banks, a British financier who bankrolled the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, has long bragged about his “boozy six-hour lunch” with the Russian ambassador eight months before the vote.

Some also wondered about Mr. Banks’s Russian-born wife and their custom license plate, X MI5 SPY, after the British intelligence agency, MI5.

[...]

Now, a leaked record of some of Mr. Banks’s emails suggest that he and his closest adviser had a more engaged relationship with Russian diplomats than he has disclosed.

While Mr. Banks was spending more than eight million British pounds to promote a break with the European Union — an outcome the Russians eagerly hoped for — his contacts at the Russian Embassy in London were opening the door to at least three potentially lucrative investment opportunities in Russian-owned gold or diamond mines.

One of Mr. Banks’s business partners, and a fellow backer of Britain’s exit from the European Union, or Brexit, took the Russians up on at least one of the deals.

Much as in Washington, where investigations are underway into the possibility that Donald J. Trump’s campaign may have cooperated with the Russians, Britain is now grappling with whether Moscow tried to use its close ties with any British citizens to promote Brexit.

In Washington, the investigators for the special prosecutor, Robert S. Mueller III, and Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have also obtained records of Mr. Banks’s communications, including some with Russian diplomats and about Russian business deals.

And they have taken a special interest in close ties Mr. Banks and other Brexit leaders built to the Trump campaign.

On Nov. 12, 2016, Mr. Banks met President-elect Trump in Trump Tower. Upon his return to London, Mr. Banks had another lunch with the Russian ambassador where they discussed the Trump visit.

  NYT

Mr. Mueller's team has a viper's nest to unravel.

The first contacts between Mr. Banks and the Russian Embassy came in September 2015, during a conference for the pro-Brexit United Kingdom Independent Party, or UKIP.

He and [his media advisor, Andrew] Wigmore met a Russian diplomat, Alexander Udod, who was later among a list of 23 suspected spies expelled from Britain after the recent poisoning of a former Russia spy, Sergei V. Skripal, on British soil.

In the interview, Mr. Banks said he and Mr. Wigmore had asked Mr. Udod if they could meet the ambassador, “because we thought it would be interesting.”

"Interesting."

At the first meeting with the ambassador, over lunch, Mr. Banks recalled in his memoir, the ambassador served him a special bottle of vodka that he claimed was made for Stalin.

And Banks believed him. "Easy mark, here, Vladimir."

In August, Mr. Banks had lunch with the Russian ambassador and discussed the Trump campaign. At their lunch after Mr. Trump’s victory in November, the two men discussed what role Jeff Sessions, then a senator, might play in the cabinet, according to people who have reviewed the records of his emails.

Mr. Banks, though, said he doubted that the Russians had cultivated him for reasons other than routine trade promotion.

"Very easy."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Regarding that Farage aide busted for money laundering

A former aide to Nigel Farage who was arrested on money-laundering charges last year gave US federal agents “information” as part of a plea agreement that sharply reduced his possible prison sentence from a maximum of 20 years to eight months, according to court documents.

George Cottrell, a Briton who was arrested in the US last summer after attending the Republican National Convention with Farage, the former Ukip leader, received a sentence that was on the low end of the sentencing guidelines used to determine such cases even though the Arizona prosecutors in his case said they had evidence that showed Cottrell had shown “clear intent” to engage in criminal activity in the past.

  Guardian

"On the low end"? I should say, if the possibility was 20 years. That must have been some information he gave up.

Cottrell ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in a case that was unrelated to his work at Ukip. The crime was committed in 2014, before Cottrell worked for either the anti-EU party or Farage. Twenty other counts against him, including blackmail, were dismissed as part of the plea deal.

[...]

A court document filed by the prosecutors in February – which has not previously been reported in detail – advised the judge in the case to offer Cottrell a light prison sentence because he had been willing to “provide federal agents additional information after his arrest”.

Hear that Mssrs Cohen and Manafort?

Cottrell had been working in Farage’s office and claimed on his LinkedIn account to have co-directed Ukip’s EU referendum campaign fundraising.

I suppose you could launder money through a political campaign.

After the arrest, Farage called Cottrell a “22-year-old unpaid volunteer and party supporter” and said he knew nothing of the “series of allegations” that had been lodged against him.

A "coffee boy" perhaps.

According to court records that delved into the 2014 episode, Cottrell offered to help the undercover agents – who were posing as drug dealers – to disguise their drug profits and evade federal taxes. Prosecutors also alleged that Cottrell claimed to have contacts at banks that he could use to funnel illicit money to offshore accounts and then transfer them back to domestic accounts disguised as legitimate business income. Prosecutors said in court documents that the agents were “impressed with his knowledge of finance, US government procedures, and anti-money-laundering laws”.

[...]

Under the terms of his agreement with prosecutors, Cottrell admitted to communicating with individuals online in 2014 who were seeking to launder illicit funds. He also admitted that he had explained methods to them that they could use to launder the money. The case involved a sting operation in which federal agents posed as drug dealers. Cottrell met the undercover agents in Las Vegas in 2014, according to the original indictment, but the charges in connection with that meeting were dropped.

[...]

Cottrell had enjoyed a personal relationship with Farage and the Ukip donor Arron Banks. In his book about the Brexit campaign, Banks called Cottrell, the nephew of Lord Hesketh, a former Tory minister who defected to Ukip, “Posh George”.

“Posh to the point of caricature and wilfully abrasive, but extremely generous when it comes to picking up the bar tab,” Banks wrote.

[...]

The nature of the information Cottrell provided to federal agents is not spelled out in the court documents. But the documents state that the 23-year-old, who is living in the UK, provided federal agents with “additional information about his role in the offence and how he became involved”.

[...]

Twenty counts against Cottrell were dropped in the plea deal, including a conspiracy charge.

[...]

His attorney, Michael Kimerer, described the fraud as a single aberrant, abnormal and huge mistake, and said Cottrell had been a law-abiding citizen since that period in 2014, and that he had become involved in politics, which he enjoyed.

A natural progression, you might say.

He includes being a “federal inmate” on his LinkedIn resume, as well as working as a consultant at an unnamed private intelligence agency serving government and corporate clients. He allegedly worked for the intelligence firm from October 2014 to July 2016, while also working for Ukip from January 2016 until his arrest.

[...]

He also claims to have worked as a private client manager at an unnamed bank, specialised in “onboarding” wealthy clients and assisting in the implementation of “leading edge tax solutions within multiple jurisdictions”.

So that's how you list money launderer specializing in avoidance of taxes on your resumé.

What intelligence agency and doing what government work, I wonder.

[His] dramatic arrest occurred at O’Hare airport in Chicago on 22 July, just as Cottrell, who was travelling with Farage, was leaving the US for the UK after attending the Republican National Convention in Ohio.

Must have been getting the coffee when that picture was taken.

Posh George

Linking Trump and Farage through Bannon, Russia, and money laundering

Stories are coming out now that the Brexit people were also in collusion with the Russians. And it gets just as dark and tainted as the Trump story. Here's the Guardian on the latest:

[I]t’s a fascinating, revealing, and disturbing insight into the nature of the relationship between officials representing the Russian government and the main funder of the Leave campaign. A relationship that was, until now, partly covert and hidden. And which Banks conceded in parliament on Tuesday that he’d lied about for two years.

This was the campaign headed by Nigel Farage, whose close friend and ally, Steve Bannon, had been Trump’s campaign manager and who said, on Wednesday: “I have never received any Russian financial or political support...”

And it plunges Britain directly into the same nexus of relationships that is the focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Two years on, we are in the dark about so much. What was the exact nature of Farage’s Leave.EU campaign’s relationship to the Russian government?

[...]

Farage had been on the campaign trail for Trump when his aide and fundraiser, George Cottrell, was arrested by the FBI on money-laundering charges. Material seen by the Observer suggests [political campaigner Andy] Wigmore sent confidential legal documents, including the FBI indictment, to the Russian embassy.

[...]

I’ve been investigating this story, and this web of relationships between Trump, Russia, Cambridge Analytica and the Leave campaign for 18 months. And [...] Leave.EU has crafted social media messages targeted at me, aimed at discrediting me and my work.

[...]

A few months earlier, [Leave.EU Brexit campaign co-founder Arron] Banks tweeted: “@carolecadwalla wouldn’t be so lippy in Russia!” A tweet he has now deleted.

[...]

Two weeks later, the Observer received the first of a series of extraordinary letters from the Russian embassy – one of which came personally to me from [Russian ambassador to the UK, ] Alexander Yakovenko – about my reporting. “We think it’s a textbook example of bad journalism which raises quite a few questions regarding the true colours of the reporter.” Then, on 13 November, a watershed moment, when Theresa May finally stood up and accused Russia of “weaponising information” and meddling in our democracy.

[...]

The next day, Leave.EU’s official account tweeted a video, headlined: “@carolecadwalla takes a hit as the Russian conspiracy deepens.” It described me as “hysterical Guardian investigator Carole Codswallop”. The video was a clip of the film Airplane! and they had photoshopped my face into that of a “hysterical” woman being hit repeatedly around the head. The last frame showed a woman with a gun. In the background, the Russian anthem played.

[...]

Hundreds of people reported it to Twitter and the police, but still it stayed up. On the evening of the second day, I asked my editor to intervene. That night, he wrote to Wigmore. The next morning, it finally came down.

[...]

There was nothing hidden or covert about the hundreds of social media postings and tweets that showed Leave.EU’s and Farage’s support of Russian policies and the Russian political agenda. What I hadn’t contemplated, until now, was that this may have been co-ordinated with the Russian government.

[...]

[W]hat we appear to see through Banks and Wigmore is a linked series of relationships between the Trump campaign – via Steve Bannon – to the public face of Leave.EU’s campaign, Nigel Farage. Through Farage to Banks and Wigmore. And through Banks and Wigmore to the Russian government.

[...]

[I]s this a relationship between the Russians and the Leave campaign that is hiding in plain sight?

What we know now is that this relationship is deeper and more complex than we could have imagined. And that Banks and Wigmore lied about it: to the public, to parliament. And we don’t know why.

  Guardian

Friends of Russia money laundering club?

UPDATE:

In related news:

Posh George gets busted.