The Great British Heist: The £8 Million Brexit Job

How Arron Banks bankrolled a referendum with offshore money, wrote off the debt, and walked away without paying a penny back.

By Sean Ash

In a healthy democracy, the public expects transparency, accountability, and truth. But when the financial engine behind a national referendum remains murky and unresolved, trust begins to erode. That is where the story of Arron Banks begins, and where the British public deserves answers.

Arron Banks, the businessman widely known as a key financial backer of Brexit, provided £8 million to the Leave.EU campaign. This money was not a donation in the traditional sense. It was reported as a loan from Rock Holdings Ltd, a company Banks owns and which is registered in the Isle of Man. The Isle of Man is outside the scope of UK electoral donation rules.

UK law prohibits political donations from foreign companies. However, loans are treated differently. If a loan is from a company controlled by a UK resident and meets certain conditions, it can be legal. This distinction proved crucial.

In 2018, the Electoral Commission referred Banks to the National Crime Agency. They raised concerns about the source of the £8 million and whether it was legally permissible. In September 2019, the NCA concluded there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing. They stated that the money had come from a company Banks controlled, and that there was no evidence of funding from a third party.

At the time, the NCA accepted the arrangement on the basis that it was a legitimate loan. But in 2022, when Leave.EU went into liquidation, Banks wrote off more than £7 million of that loan. There is no record of repayment. No instalments, no interest, no recovery. The debt simply vanished.

While Banks incurred a loss by writing off the £8 million loan to Leave.EU, he gained £16.7 million in profits from Eldon Insurance in the same period. This dramatic increase in profits, from just £284,000 in 2015, was reportedly due to data and AI technology that mirrored tools used during the Brexit campaign. The success of Eldon Insurance suggests that the financial loss in one area was offset by gains in another, potentially benefiting from the increased visibility, connections, and political influence resulting from his high-profile involvement in Brexit.

This raises an important question. If a loan is never repaid, was it truly a loan? Or was it in effect a donation from an offshore company? If it was the latter, then it would not have been legally allowed under UK political finance rules.

The NCA did not revisit its investigation after the loan was written off. The public was never offered a full explanation. The legal system closed the case based on one version of events, but those events changed.

At the same time, journalist Carole Cadwalladr was independently investigating Banks and the broader influence operations surrounding Brexit. She highlighted his financial contributions, his undisclosed meetings with Russian officials, and the use of harvested Facebook data in political microtargeting. In 2018, she gave a TED Talk that brought these concerns to an international audience.

Banks sued her for libel. He did not sue because her claims were proven false, but rather because he said they harmed his reputation. In 2022, the High Court ruled in Cadwalladr’s favour, stating that her reporting was in the public interest and based on credible evidence available at the time. However, in 2023, the Court of Appeal found that continuing to leave the TED Talk online after April 2020, when the NCA concluded there was no evidence of criminality, caused serious harm to Banks’s reputation. As a result, Cadwalladr was ordered to pay £35,000 in damages and a portion of his legal fees.

The judgment was about timing, not truth. Cadwalladr was punished not because her work was false, but because she left it online after regulators had drawn a line under the matter. Meanwhile, the man she investigated had changed the financial facts after that line was drawn.

In 2022, Arron Banks wrote off the majority of the £8 million loan that had been used to fund the Leave.EU campaign. This means that the money, originally declared as a repayable loan from his offshore company, was never recovered. It was absorbed as a loss. In effect, this means that one of the most influential campaigns in British political history was funded with money from an offshore source that was never repaid.

This action fundamentally changes how the funding should be understood. What began as a declared loan ended as an unrecovered injection of money. Although technically lawful under the rules at the time, the decision to write off the loan after the investigation had concluded raises critical concerns. Had the loan been written off before the NCA’s inquiry closed, it may have been judged differently. By erasing the debt after the fact, the financial support behind Leave.EU effectively became a donation, and one that came from a jurisdiction outside the UK’s donation rules.

This is not just a matter of accounting. It is a matter of democratic integrity. The public must ask whether it is acceptable for a campaign that helped reshape the future of the country to have been financed in this way, and why, despite all this, no further investigation was opened once the financial status of the loan changed.

The Leave.EU campaign itself was also criticised for its use of misinformation. It claimed that 29 million Romanians and Bulgarians would move to the UK, which never happened. It said Turkey was about to join the EU, which was false. It warned that Britain would be forced into adopting the euro, despite having an opt-out. It raised fears of an EU army, which did not exist. In areas like South Wales, it ran adverts claiming the EU blocked investment, even though EU funding had supported those same communities.

These messages were not simply exaggerations. They were targeted emotional appeals, amplified by data gathered from social media users without their full understanding or consent. Whistleblowers from Cambridge Analytica confirmed that data had been weaponised to sway public opinion.

After all of this, Banks moved from influencing politics to actively entering it. In 2025, he stood for election as West of England mayor under the Reform UK party. He lost, but came second with more than 45,000 votes.

This was a man who had helped fund a national referendum through a loan that was never repaid. He had launched legal action against a journalist who exposed him. He had written off millions without consequence. And he was still seeking public office.

This story is not about political ideology. It is not about whether one supports Brexit or not. It is about accountability, timing, and fairness. Why was the loan never repaid? Why did the NCA not revisit the case once the financial facts changed? Why was a journalist penalised for revealing information that was later confirmed to be legitimate? And why has the result of the referendum never been reviewed in light of these circumstances?

It is not enough to say that no law was broken at the time. If the rules allowed this, then the rules were not good enough. Arron Banks helped finance Brexit through a financial structure that has since changed. The public still does not know the full truth. And the institutions tasked with protecting our democracy have chosen not to dig deeper.

This is not just about one campaign. It is about how open our democracy is to outside influence. The UK has not taken back control. Instead, we have opened our electoral system to a financial loophole so large it could be used again and again. Under current rules, a foreign offshore company can loan money to a UK-registered company, which then spends that money on political campaigning. So long as the UK company is legally registered and claims the funds as a loan, it is allowed. And if that loan is later written off, the money becomes a donation in all but name, yet without triggering legal penalties.

You do not even need to be British to do this. If you are a foreign national, you can register a UK company. That company can then receive a loan from an offshore bank, whether Russian, Chinese, American, or otherwise. You could then use that money to influence British elections, fund digital ads, donate to parties, or back a referendum. As long as your company is legally registered in the UK and declares the loan, it falls within the rules. And if the loan is never paid back, there is no automatic consequence. The law has no mechanism to punish it. No one checks whether the original money came from a state-linked entity, a private foreign investor, or an intelligence-linked financier.

This is not safeguarding democracy. This is an open door. We have not strengthened our sovereignty. We have made it available for hire.

In British law, there is a principle known as the mischief rule. It states that when interpreting the law, judges should look at the purpose behind the law, the mischief it was intended to prevent, and rule in a way that closes loopholes rather than opens them. The purpose of political finance law is clear. It is to stop secret or foreign money from influencing elections. It is to ensure campaigns are funded transparently and fairly. It is to uphold public trust in democracy.

Arron Banks declared the £8 million as a loan. That made it legal at the time. But then, after investigations had closed and regulatory attention had moved on, he wrote off the loan. The money was never repaid. The campaign was never truly accountable for it. And because the system had no mechanism to revisit or prosecute based on a later write-off, no consequences followed.

This is exactly the kind of situation the mischief rule exists to address. It may have been legal on paper, but it undermined the spirit of the law. It manipulated timing and technicalities to avoid scrutiny. And it exposed how easy it is for the wealthy to bend democracy without ever appearing to break it.

Worse still, this has now set a precedent. Because no one was held to account, it tells future political donors or campaigners that this strategy is viable. You can take out a massive loan, funnel it through your own company, fund a national campaign with it, and then just write it off later once no one is watching. There is no deterrent, no follow-up, no legal mechanism to go back. This is no longer just a loophole. It is an open invitation. If this is not challenged, then the message is clear. The richest people in the country can fund election outcomes using unrepaid loans from offshore companies, and it will be treated as legal as long as they wait long enough to cancel the debt. This is not just a warning. It is a blueprint for how to buy influence, rewrite a nation’s future, and walk away untouched.

We must ask not just how this happened, but why it was allowed to continue. If truth depends on timing and power depends on silence, then the real casualty is trust in the system itself.

The Blueprint Continues: Reform UK and the Offshore Playbook

The financial strategies that enabled Arron Banks to support the Leave.EU campaign with an £8 million loan from an offshore company appear to persist in contemporary political fundraising. Reform UK, the successor to the Brexit Party and currently led by Nigel Farage, has reportedly adopted similar approaches.

In 2025, Reform UK initiated a fundraising campaign targeting affluent individuals in low-tax jurisdictions such as Monaco, the United Arab Emirates, and Switzerland. According to an Investigation by the Good Law Project, over two-thirds of Reform UK’s donations have been linked to companies and individuals associated with offshore jurisdictions. The party aimed to solicit donations from British expatriates and foreign nationals who own UK-registered companies. Under existing UK electoral law, these companies are considered permissible donors, even if their ultimate owners reside abroad and have limited economic ties to the UK beyond corporate registration.

This framework allows individuals residing outside the UK to use UK-registered companies to legally donate to British political parties, even if the funds originate offshore. These donations can then be used to influence UK elections, finance digital advertising campaigns, or support political messaging in key constituencies. Reform UK’s treasurer, Nick Candy, has been instrumental in these efforts, reportedly securing significant donations from expatriates with UK-based businesses.

While these practices comply with the letter of the law, they raise questions about the spirit of electoral finance regulations. The reliance on offshore-linked donations by a party that positions itself as a champion of British sovereignty and populism presents a paradox. Critics might argue that this approach may undermine the integrity of the UK’s democratic processes by allowing substantial foreign-influenced funding to shape domestic political outcomes.

The continuation of such financial strategies underscores the need for a comprehensive review of political donation laws to ensure transparency and prevent potential exploitation of legal loopholes.

Author’s Note and Legal Disclaimer

This article has been written with care and diligence using only publicly available facts, verified media reports, official government records, and existing UK law. It does not accuse any individual or entity of criminal wrongdoing. It raises serious concerns about the current legal and regulatory framework surrounding political campaign finance in the United Kingdom.

Where specific examples are used, they are presented based on the findings of official investigations, public documents, or widely reported media coverage. Where hypothetical scenarios are presented, they are offered to illustrate structural weaknesses in the law and are not claims of real events or actions.

The purpose of this article is to inform, educate, and promote discussion around transparency, democratic integrity, and electoral fairness. It is written in the public interest, with full awareness of legal boundaries under UK defamation and electoral law.

— Sean Ash