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The UK Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee said "it cannot determine whether the Kremlin tried to influence the 2016 Brexit referendum, because the British government has not even tried to find out"

By bristol_news - 25th May 2021, 12:00 am

In July 2020, British lawmakers reached a demanding conclusion about the possibility of Russian electoral interference in the UK. Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee said "it cannot determine whether the Kremlin tried to influence the 2016 Brexit referendum, because the British government has not even tried to find out (1). "The outrage isn't whether there was interference, the outrage is that no one has wanted to know if there was interference," Kevan Jones MP (Labour) told a news conference laying out the committee's findings. "That comes through very loud and clear in our report. (2) (7)"

It is not as if there is nothing to examine either, in January 2018 the U.S. Senate published a report by the Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee detailing Vladimir Putin's asymmetric assault on democracy in Russia and Europe: pointing strongly to the way UK campaign finance laws do not require disclosure of political donations if they are from "the beneficial owners of non-British companies that are incorporated in the EU and carry out business in the UK." This opacity "may have enabled Russian-related money to be directed with insufficient scrutiny to various political actors."

The senators noted that research conducted by a joint team of experts from the University of California at Berkeley and Swansea University identified 150,000 Twitter accounts with various Russian ties that disseminated messages about Brexit  (3). "Researchers at the University of Edinburgh identified 419 accounts operating from the Russian Internet research Agency attempting to influence UK politics out of 2,752 accounts suspended by Twitter in the USA. Professor Laura Cram, director of neuropolitics at the University of Edinburgh, told The Guardian that 419 fake accounts had tweeted about Brexit a total of 3,468 times.

The report points to the vast flow of Russian money into the UK, including the London property market. It records how the Metropolitan Police noted that a value of £180m in properties in the UK had been under investigation as possibly having been purchased with corrupt proceeds by secretive offshore companies. An earlier 2015 report pointed to 'intelligence 'gaps.' (5)' A Deutsche Bank analysis in 2015 of the UK's balance of payments data (4) suggested that since the mid-1970s much of this money has come from one country in particular. The bank's reported noted: "There is strong evidence that a good chunk of the UK's £133bn hidden capital inflows is related to Russia."

One of the accounts run by the Kremlin-linked operation attempted to stir anti-Islamic sentiment during the Westminster Bridge terror attack in March in a bogus post claiming a Muslim woman ignored victims - a claim that was highlighted by mainstream media outlets including the Mail Online and The Sun.

For days after, the tweeter was gleefully sharing press clippings, "Wow...I'm on the Daily Mail front page! Thank you British libs! You're making me famous," he said, referring to an article that appeared on the Mail Online and which still bore the tweet at the time of writing (see it on the left). 

Then UK Prime Minister Theresa May gave a speech to the City's Mansion House in which she said "Russia we know what you are doing," to which the Russian governement snapped back "We know what you are doing as well" Inviting May to try some Crimean wine, alluding to their invasion of Ukrainian territory in the Crimea in 2014 (8).

Theresa May's role as Home Secretary in the run-up to the 2016 Brexit referendum has been called into question. The Daily Mail "understand that in early 2016 she declined a request by one of the security services to investigate UKIP's £8m donor Banks - 'as the topic was simply too explosive in the run-up to the referendum' (9). Then there is the reshaping of the UK security services on Theresa May's watch as Home Secretary. With so many Conservative Party 'friends' coming under scrutiny from the Serious Fraud Office, there had been mounting pressure to hive off some of its responsibilities to another agency to lighten its burden allegedly. It was caught up in some serious cases prior to 2016  in which Conservative Party donors were burnt by SFO pressure. So at the time of the 'run-up' to the Brexit referendum in 2016, the new UK FBI was getting off the ground and it seems to have been in total chaos. Then it also became clear that the Conservative Party was 'putting its fingers on the scales of justice" as Jon Benton, a former head of the National Crime Agency's international crime unit, investigating corruption and Russian moneylaundering said "he had been ordered to stop looking into Russian money laundering." John Benton said "a more senior official linked to the Foreign Office told him to drop his inquiry." (21) Boris Johnson was Foreign Secretary from July 13 2016 and before that it was Phillip Hammond, who was Defence Secretary at the time of the Brompton Road former tube station sale in 2014. Although the request to stop investigating Russian moneylaundering relates to Dmitry Kluyev and Bill Browder's Magnitsky allegations - continuing with an investigation into moneylaundering was not something a Foreign Secretary seemed keen to countenance.

"The flagship crime-fighting force set up to become Britain's FBI is mired in chaos, failure and plunging morale, with a spate of shock resignations at the highest level. Head of the NCA, Keith Bristow is among seven members of the 17-strong management board to quit in the space of a few months." The article went on to say "senior figures are concerned at the level of control over the NCA exerted by the Home Secretary," "a watchdog found officers could not even use the internet at their desks" and the "NCA's computer servers are in danger of meltdown and it suffered a three-day IT blackout"(20)

For example, in May 2012, "Tories dropped me, despite donation" ran the Times headline. "Vincent Tchenguiz told how he was abandoned by the Tory Party after he was arrested during an investigation into the collapse of an Icelandic bank." Tchenguiz said "it had definitely not been useful to donate £120,000 to David Cameron's party." The article goes on: "Mr Tchenguiz is the second major donor to criticise the party in less than a week. Adrian Beecroft, a venture capitalist, earlier attacked the government for rowing back on plans to scale back unfair dismissal rules"(10). 

Other Tory donor firms were luckier. Former Ulster Unionist MP David Burnside's firm New Century Media donated "one third of its profits to the Conservative Party in just one year leading up to the 2010 election."   The Independent said "according to Electoral Commission records, New Century Media gave the Conservatives £85,000 in the months prior to the General Election, despite the company only making £267,000 in profit for the same financial year."

The Independent goes on "The company has paid for ministers to be their guests at Conservative events. New Century represents the personal foundation of the Ukrainian billionaire Dmytro Firtash, who has been indicted on bribery and corruption charges, which he denies, in the United States (11). In 2013, John Whittingdale MP and his colleagues in the British Ukrainian Society board (which includes top Firtash aid Robert Shetler-Jones as a director) helped organise an event sponsored by the Ukrainian President and then London Mayor Boris Johnson called Days of Ukraine (12). The mid-October event stretched across London and included Dmytro Firtash opening the London Stock Exchange; Firtash had a prestigious reception in the House of Commons meeting top Conservative Party politicians hosted by John Whittingdale MP and Tory peer Lord Risby, who was Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party 2005-2010, now British Trade Envoy to Algeria and Libya and President of the British Ukrainian Society.(13).  Then Days of Ukraine concluded with a banquet at the National History Museum with hundreds of VIP guests."

Earlier in the year, New Century Media's success for its Russian clients had been on view as Duma MP and close Vladimir Putin confidante Vasily Shestakov was granted Freedom of the City of London in a ceremony in May 2013 (14). A month later he met UK Prime Minister, David Cameron (15) at a closed event in Old Billingsgate Market which included 450 attendees at tables costing £12,000 each, rubbing shoulders with the PM and Cabinet ministers. The collective wealth of the super-rich supporters was a whopping £11bn. "The precise amount raised from the 2013 event cannot be quantified, but Electoral Commission filings in 2014 showed that since the ball those present donated a total of £5m, £1.1m of which was registered in the week after the event. Total sales raised at least £250,000, with the cheaper tickets going for £400 a time."  Who sat on which table is here for anyone seeking to cross-reference (16). 

Boris Johnson, then Mayor of London, shared a table with Andrei Borodin, an exiled Russian banker who is wanted by the Kremlin to face charges of "aggravated swindling" over an alleged £220m bank fraud, which he denies and claims is politically driven. Borodin said "I participated in no conversation on policy or party funding, nor did I make any donation at the event." He did have an oblique connection with another individual we mentioned earlier, which would 'come in to play' later in 2013. Borodin bought his Henley house from Michael Spink Property for £140m (17). He would have appreciated Spink's style and panache and if Boris needed to make a recommendation of a top-flight professional to sell the former Brompton Road tube station, which was to come to market in September 2013, Spink would be someone whom he could suggest.

At the Old Billingsgate Market event in June 2013, Tim Lewin recounted to The Guardian that he and Burnside had founded the Postive Russia Foundation, an organisation designed to improve Russia's image in the UK. Russian press reports said it was not just Lewin and Burnside's idea. Shestakov was closely involved in its setting up and it was designed to combat anti-Russian propaganda in the British media. The article also detailed the fact that Prince Michael of Kent had been lined up as a key figurehead to promote Sheshtakov's FIAS (SAMBO - a form of judo) together with Putin himself and that a demonstration event at Kensington Palace would occur (18), which took place on the 11th June, 2013 a few days earlier (19).

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