BBC interview fails to clear up all the doubts about funding of leave campaign

The insurance businessman and Ukip political donor Arron Banks has been interviewed by the BBC following the announcement that the National Crime Agency is investigating his funding of the leave campaign in the Brexit referendum.

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On the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, Banks denied wrongdoing and insisted he was the true source of the £8m funding. But several questions remain.

Where precisely did the money come from?

Banks insisted on Sunday that his UK-based company, Rock Services Limited, provided the cash for the Leave.EU campaign. “The money came from Rock Services, which was a UK limited company. It was generated out of insurance business written in the UK,” he told Marr.

However, earlier this year, Banks told parliament’s digital, culture, media and sport select committee, which has been holding an inquiry into online disinformation, that: “Rock Services is a treasury function, it just delivers the cash. It is just a service company. The actual loan came from another one of my companies that was delivered in.”

This video has been removed. This could be because it launched early, our rights have expired, there was a legal issue, or for another reason. Arron Banks denies foreign funding of Brexit campaign - video

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What is the role of Rock Holdings?

Even though questions have been raised about the source of Banks’s wealth for more than a year, this is the first time the offshore entity Rock Holdings, based in the tax haven of the Isle of Man, has featured.

According to the Electoral Commission, Bank’s business associate Liz Bilney told investigators that although Banks was the source of the £8m, the money had been provided to him via a shareholder loan from his companies.

The report reads: “This loan, Ms Bilney said, was made to Mr Banks by Rock Services in the amount of £8m, but was not recorded in Rock Services’ company accounts, and was instead recorded in Rock Holdings’ company accounts even though Rock Holdings had nothing to do with the loan of £8m.”

Bilney told the BBC’s World at One that the commission had misunderstood the arrangement and she was confident all parties would be exonerated by the NCA investigation.

Does this have anything to do with Russia?

The Electoral Commission’s report on Banks makes no mention of Russia or Russian funding, and Banks has laughed off any suggestion of Russian influence over him or his companies.

However, he has been forced to revise upwards his account of the number of times he met the Russian ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, to at least four following scrutiny from journalists.