CEO of Leave.EU Categorically Denies Russian Funding

1 November 2018, 20:42 | Updated: 1 November 2018, 20:55

In light of the NCA's investigation into Arron Banks and Leave.EU, Liz Bilney also questioned whether political motives were at play.

After the National Crime Agency announced its investigation into Arron Banks and his Leave.EU campaign, Liz Bilney, the CEO of Leave.EU, spoke to Iain Dale.

When asked if the main line of defence was that Arron Banks is the sole owner of the companies which provided the loans, Liz revealed that was "part of the answer...[but] it is a very complicated structure".

She revealed that legal advice was taken on how to put the loans in place, as they "didn't want to get into this type of water and this territory that we've ended up in".

Talking about the previous fine issued to the Leave.EU campaign, Ms Bilney was steadfast in her confirmation that "the money came from Arron himself".

When Iain Dale brought up accusations of Russian funding, the Leave.EU CEO confirmed that the money did not emanate in any way from Russian sources.

"We don't have any Russian money flowing through our business and that would come up in any audit", she said.

When asked why she thought the accusations of Russian funding had come about, Ms Bilney said that "people do want Brexit to fail and there is a political witch hunt going on".

Referring to the Electoral Commission's Legal Officer Bob Posner's comments that Arron Banks and Liz Bilney had "knowingly concealed the true circumstances under which this money was provided", Iain asked if they would sue Posner for libel and Liz Bilney responded that they would have to look at this further down the road.

When Iain asked if Ms Bilney thought there were "political motives at play", mentioning that Nigel Farage had accused the electoral commission of being dominated by remainers, Liz said that she "was never one to be a conspiracy theorist but when you live through it, you really start to question it. There looks to be a lot of collusion. We have had every investigation under the sun over the past two and a half years and you do start to join the dots together."

"We know that the result wasn't popular, especially with the government and the remain MPs, we've had 70 MPs write to the Met Police asking why they aren't investigating."

"We've seen everything over the last twelve months so nothing would surprise me at the moment", Liz said.