Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum

Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum concerns the evidence and ongoing investigation by the UK Electoral Commission, the UK Parliament's Culture Select Committee, and the United States Senate, on alleged Russian interference in the "Brexit" poll of 23 June 2016. This has raised questions over the legal validity of the Brexit referendum.

Timeline

Background

After the referendum on the United Kingdom exiting the European Union ("Brexit"), Prime Minister David Cameron suggested that Russia "might be happy" with a positive Brexit vote. The official Remain campaign accused the Kremlin of secretly backing a positive Brexit vote.

Before the vote

• 2014 July 22, Laurence Levy, a lawyer with the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, advises Rebekah Mercer, Steve Bannon, and Alexander Nix on the legality of their company, Cambridge Analytica, being involved in U.S. elections. He advises that Nix and any foreign nationals without a green card working for the company not be involved in any decisions about work the company performs for any clients related to U.S. elections. He further advises Nix to recuse himself from any involvement with the company's U.S. election work because he is not a U.S. citizen.
• 2015 September 26–27, Andy Wigmore meets Alexander Udod during the UKIP annual conference at the Doncaster Racecourse. Udod is a Russian diplomat and suspected Russian intelligence officer who is expelled from the U.K. in 2018 in retaliation for the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. In October, Udod arranges a November lunch for Wigmore, Arron Banks, and the Russian ambassador to London, Alexander Yakovenko.
• 24 October 2015 Arron Banks sends an email to Steve Bannon and others to request help from Cambridge Analytica, where Bannon is a VP, with fundraising in the U.S. for the Leave.EU campaign. Foreign contributions to British political campaigns are illegal. Banks comes under criminal investigation in 2018 in part over questions about Leave.EU's funding sources.
• 6 November 2015, Wigmore and Banks have lunch with Yakovenko at the ambassador's residence in London; they brief him on Brexit. In a June 2018 interview, Wigmore tells The Washington Post his goal for the meeting was to discuss finding a buyer for a banana plantation in Belize.
• 17 November 2015, Andy Wigmore, Banks, and Cambridge Analytica executive Brittany Kaiser launch the Leave.EU campaign. Yakovenko introduces Wigmore and Banks to Russian oligarch Siman Povarenkin. In 2018, The Guardian reports that documents related to the meeting suggest Banks was offered business deals.
• 2016 March, Philip Hammond, the former Secretary for Defence and Foreign Secretary (later the Chancellor of the Exchequer) stated "the only country who would like us to leave the EU is Russia" at a speech in March 2016.

After the 23 June 2016 vote

• 2016 July 21, Wigmore and Nigel Farage encounter staffers for Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant at the bar in the Hilton Hotel. A staffer invites Wigmore and Farage to Mississippi.

• December 2016, Ben Bradshaw MP claimed in Parliament that Russia had interfered in the Brexit referendum campaign. In February 2017, Bradshaw called on the British intelligence service, Government Communications Headquarters, then under Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary, to reveal any information it had on Russian interference.

• 26 February 2017, Andy Wigmore tells The Guardian that Robert Mercer donated Cambridge Analytica's services to the Leave.EU campaign. The U.K. Electoral Commission says the donation was not declared.

• 16 March 2017, The American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) gives an "International Consultant of the Year" award to Nigel Farage and Leave.EU in Huntington Beach, California.

• 17–25 March 2017, While in Orange County, California, Farage and Arron Banks attend GOP gatherings at Scott Baugh's invitation. Splitting California into two states is discussed at two of the gatherings. Afterwards, Farage's publicist tells The Sunday Times a fabricated story about Baugh and Gerry Gunster hiring Farage and Banks to help fundraise in California for a campaign to split the state in two.

• 2017 October, Members of Parliament in the Culture, Media and Sport Committee demanded that Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other social media corporations disclose all adverts and details of payments by Russia in the Brexit campaign.

• November 2017, it became public knowledge that Matthew Elliott, the chief executive of Vote Leave, was a founding member of Conservative Friends of Russia, and had been a target asset by someone known to be a Russian spy.

• 12 December 2017, members of the US Congress Ruben Gallego, Eric Swalwell and Gerry Connolly wrote to the Director of National Intelligence requesting information on Russian interference in the Brexit vote. On 13 December 2017, Facebook stated that it found no significant Russian activity during Brexit, but this was immediately rejected by the committee chair, Damian Collins, as being information that was already public after US investigations into Russian interference.

• 2018 January, a US Senate minority report suggested possible ways Russia may have influenced the Brexit campaign. It stated,

“ The Russian government has sought to influence democracy in the United Kingdom through disinformation, cyber hacking, and corruption. While a complete picture of the scope and nature of Kremlin interference in the UK's June 2016 referendum is still emerging, Prime Minister Theresa May and the UK government have condemned the Kremlin’s active measures, and various UK government entities, including the Electoral Commission and parliamentarians, have launched investigations into different aspects of possible Russian government meddling. ”

• 19 March 2018, Channel 4 broadcasts its investigative documentary on Cambridge Analytica.

• June 2018, The Guardian suggested that Arron Banks, the biggest donor to the campaign for leaving, and co-organiser of Leave.EU received the offer of a Russian gold mine, and had had a series of meetings with the Russian Ambassador. On 14 June 2018, Banks appeared before Parliamentary committee hearing, where he appeared to admit to having lied about his engagements with Russians, and later walked out refusing to answer further questions by citing a luncheon appointment with the Democratic Unionist Party.

• July 2018, the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, released an interim report on 'Disinformation and ‘fake news’', stating that Russia had engaged in "unconventional warfare" through Twitter and other social media against the United Kingdom, designed to amplify support for a "leave" vote in Brexit.

• 20 September, AggregateIQ, a Canadian political consultancy and analytics company, receives the first GDPR notice issued by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for using people's data "for purposes which they would not have expected." Various pro-Brexit campaigns paid the company £3.5 million to target ads at prospective voters. While its Brexit work was before the GDPR went into effect, it was fined because it retained and continued to use the data after the GDPR came into full force. The company is affiliated with SCL Group and Cambridge Analytica, and Cambridge Analytica employees sometimes call AggregateIQ "our Canadian office."

• 1 November 2018, The British National Crime Agency opens a criminal investigation into Arron Banks upon referral from the Electoral Commission and concluded "we have reasonable grounds to suspect that: Mr Banks was not the true source of the £8m reported as loans" and "Various criminal offences may have been committed." The commission believes Banks facilitated a loan from Rock Holdings to his Leave.EU campaign. Rock Holdings is barred from funding campaigns in the U.K. under British election law because it is on the Isle of Man, which is a possession of the British Crown but not part of the United Kingdom.

• 2019 February, The Guardian reports that Brittany Kaiser, former business development director of SCL Group, was subpoenaed by Robert Mueller. Her spokesman said she was cooperating fully with his investigation. She is the first person with links to both Brexit and the Trump campaign known to have been questioned by Mueller.

Questions about Arron Banks' funding

Arron Banks was the largest donor to the Brexit campaign. Prior to the donations, Southern Rock, Banks' underwriting company was technically insolvent and needed to find £60m to meet regulations. It was saved by a £77m cash injection, mostly in September 2015 from another company, ICS Risk Solutions which Banks claimed to own when questioned by MP Rebecca Pow, though it seems from company filings that he doesn't own all of it.

At the time, Louise Kentish of a company called STM joined the board. The day after the referendum, her husband Alan Kentish, CEO of STM and two other STM people joined as well. STM specialises in opaque wealth management using trusts and similar.

Around the same time, September 2015, Banks, along with Andy Wigmore, started having multiple meetings with Russian officials posted at the Russian embassy in London.

Also according to his South African business partner, Christopher Kimber, Banks had been in Russia trying to raise funds around that time: "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]."

Months after the cash injection Banks started making large donations to political causes including the £8m to the Brexit campaigns. The UK's Electoral Commission stated "we have reasonable grounds to suspect that: Mr Banks was not the true source of the £8m reported as loans" leading to the 2018 criminal investigation of Banks.

Banks states there was no Russian money and sent financial statements to the BBC's Newsnight programme to prove it but an email attached to the statements included the text "Redact the reference for Ural Properties and any references which include sensitive info e.g. the account numbers the money was sent from." Newsnight featured a story about this on 8 November 2018. It remains to be seen which accounts these are or what Ural Properties, a Gibraltar-based company, does.

See also

• Criminal charges brought in the Special Counsel investigation (2017–present)
• Cyberwarfare by Russia
• Foreign electoral intervention
• Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
• Russia–NATO relations
• Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
• Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2017)
• Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2018)
• Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2019)
• Tony Fabrizio
• Wilson v Prime Minister, a legal case on declaring the Brexit referendum void

External links

• Bastos, M. T., and Mercea, D. (2017). The Brexit Botnet and User-Generated Hyperpartisan News. Social Science Computer Review
• R. Booth et al, 'Russia used hundreds of fake accounts to tweet about Brexit, data shows' (14 November 2017) Guardian
• M. Burgess, 'Facebook claims Russia paid for 3 ads around Brexit – costing 73p' (13 December 2017) Wired
• E. McGaughey, 'Could Brexit be void? (2018) SSRN, and Verfassungsblog
• House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, 'Disinformation and ‘fake news’: Interim Report' (July 2018) ch 5, Russian influence in political campaigns
• US Committee on Foreign Relations, Minority Report, 'Putin's Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe: Implications for U.S. National Security' (2018)

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