Buying referendum results

Nick Cohen makes an interesting observation:

The report’s authors, Alastair Sloan and Iain Campbell, bring together what others have already discovered and add details of their own. Although it is packed with information, including responses from Banks’s lawyers, the argument boils down to this. In 2013, regulators in Gibraltar discovered that Banks’s insurance business had reserves far below what it needed. Yet a year later the apparently embattled Banks was still able to pour money into the propaganda campaigns that took us out of the EU. He gave £1m to Ukip in 2014. He followed up that small fortune with £9.6m to Leave.EU and Better for the Country Ltd, along with additional cheques for Ukip as the referendum drew near. How did he afford it?

In June, Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times, raised the same question. After his paper investigated Banks’s real worth, Barber asked on Twitter: “How rich is he really?” Banks gave a Trumpian reply: “I founded and sold a listed insurance business for £145m! Not even mentioned – no FT, fake news.”

The report referred to is on openDemocracy and asks How did Arron Banks afford Brexit?

For the sake of transparency, we all have an interest in knowing where Banks’ Brexit budget came from.