MPs are calling for the police and parliament to investigate the links between the millionaire Brexit donor Arron Banks and the Russian government, after it emerged that he met the Kremlin’s ambassador to the UK three times, rather than once as he originally claimed.

With pressure growing on Banks to explain his relations with Moscow during and after the EU referendum campaign, the Bristol-based businessman will face a postponed hearing on Tuesday before the digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS) select committee, which is investigating “fake news”.

As well as his meetings with the Russian ambassador Alexander Yakovenko, leaked emails showed that he shared at least one phone number for the Trump transition team with the Russians and he was offered the chance to participate in a potentially lucrative goldmining deal in Russia.

The emails also show Banks visited Russia in February 2016 and was invited for a further meeting with another Russian embassy official in August 2016.

Labour MP Stephen Kinnock urged Scotland Yard to launch a criminal investigation “based on an in-depth forensic look into the Kremlin connection”.

He said: “When foreign powers are aggressively targeting the values, systems and institutions upon which our democracy is built, then it’s absolutely essential that we have regulatory, security and intelligence-based organisations who are ready, willing and able to intervene.

“This is about whether we are able to uphold and defend our political culture, because we can no longer take it for granted that it can simply look after itself.”

On Sunday evening, Banks insisted that the goldmining deal had not gone ahead, he earned no money from it and he did not believe it was an attempt by Russia to pay him off.

“I am not involved in Russian espionage,” he told the Guardian. “I saw the ambassador once, I saw him twice, so what? I don’t care. At the first lunch, we had a discussion about how unlikely he thought Brexit was.”

Banks, a former Ukip donor and an associate of Nigel Farage, gave £9m to the Leave.EU and Grassroots Out Brexit campaigns, mostly in the form of loans and branded merchandise.

Asked if Yakovenko sought his opinions on the referendum, he said: “Yes, of course. That’s what diplomats do.” Banks said the ambassador offered nothing by way of assistance for the Brexit campaign and had seemed ambivalent about the outcome.

But Damian Collins, the Conservative chairman of the DCMS committee, said Russia had a track record of interfering in the politics of other countries. “The question I think people will want answered is did Mr Banks profit out of these meetings? Did that happen? Did he make money out of it and did he use that money to fund his campaigns?” he asked.

Banks said he planned to take a “hostile” approach when giving evidence to the committee. “As far as we are concerned, the committee has been creating fake news,” he said.

He dismissed Kinnock’s call for a criminal investigation as “political mischief-making”, and suggested interest in a Russian connection was being cultivated by pro-remain campaigners who were struggling to understand why they might have lost the referendum.

“What are the police going to investigate?” Banks asked. “Lunch?”

Andy Wigmore, the Leave.EU director of communications, whose emails were also leaked, told the Guardian: “There is nothing to investigate, as people will find out on Tuesday when we speak before the select committee.”

Asked if Banks benefited from the deal the Russians proposed to him, to get involved in combining six Russian goldmines in a single company, Wigmore said: “No, the goldmine deal never went forward and never happened. We looked at it briefly, found out it was way too difficult, so did nothing further.”

Stephen Doughty, a member of the home affairs select committee, said it should investigate the links between Banks and Russia.

“These are incredibly serious and growing allegations about the connections between Arron Banks and the Russians, and their ability to potentially compromise the integrity of the referendum and British democracy,” said the Labour MP. “A number of committees in parliament, including my own, will want to [take a] closer look at this.”

Asked whether there should be a police investigation, he said: “Some of the allegations are particularly serious and will no doubt need to be investigated by other authorities as well”.

Theresa May was asked about the leaks at the G7 summit in Quebec and said: “I am sure that if there are any allegations that need investigation, the proper authorities will do that.”

There has been persistent speculation about Banks’ relationships with Russian officials in the UK, since he disclosed that he and Wigmore had a “six-hour boozy lunch” with Yakovenko on 6 November 2015. But Banks has now been forced to admit the contacts were deeper than previously stated.

They also met the ambassador on 17 November 2015, when the gold deal was mentioned, and again in November 2016, three days after visiting Trump. The disclosures raise questions as to whether he participated in or profited from the proposed mining agreement with Siman Povarenkin, a Russian businessman introduced to him by the ambassador, and whether he passed on any valuable political information in the three meetings.

He is under investigation by the Electoral Commission over his donations to pro-Brexit campaigns. Its inquiry started in November and is examining whether the businessman “was the true source of loans” made by him to Leave.EU, and whether Better for the Country Ltd, a company he controlled, was “the true source of donations made to referendum campaigners in its name”.

Banks has also now been told by Companies House that he must publish the accounts of the offshore holding company ICS Risk Solutions, which he uses to finance his activities.

ICS Risk Solutions lies at the heart of Banks’s finances. It is the holding company for Eldon Insurance, the insurer behind Go Skippy, and has paid over £77m since 2015 to prop up Banks’ Southern Rock underwriting arm in Gibraltar after regulators there found that business to be trading while technically insolvent.

Banks said he would comply with any direction from Companies House.

The emails from Banks and key associates were collected by the journalist Isabel Oakeshott, who knows him well. She was the ghostwriter of his book The Bad Boys of Brexit, a diary of the period leading up to the EU referendum, and collected the emails as part of background research at the time.



Oakeshott said she only gradually appreciated their significance and was planning to publish them at a later date as part of a book she had been working on with the Conservative donor Lord Ashcroft about the “state of the British armed forces”.

She said some of her emails were hacked, but this has been denied by others who had obtained them.

The emails were initially shared with Byline Media, a crowdfunded news site, who then shared them with the Observer. Peter Jukes, the site’s director, said: “I can categorically state that the material that came into my possession was not obtained by any hacking.”

