The Rabbit Hole Goes Deeper: Following the Paper Trail That Funded Brexit

Unanswered questions, dissolved companies, and £8 million in political donations that never fully appeared in any account. What began as a campaign promise ended in a financial mystery.

By Sean Ash

In June 2016, Britain voted to leave the European Union. The result was close. Just over 1.2 million votes separated Leave from Remain. In the years since, debate has focused on sovereignty, trade, and immigration. But beneath it all, there’s a deeper question. One that hasn’t been answered.

Where did the money come from? And where did it go?

Arron Banks, the businessman behind Leave.EU, declared that he gave a total of £8 million in support of the Leave campaign. That money, according to Electoral Commission records, included both loans and donations, some from him personally, others through companies he controlled. It was the largest declared donation of the entire referendum.

But after months of personal investigation, digging through company filings, electoral data, and public records, I’ve found that there is no clear accounting trail for that £8 million in any of the UK-registered entities most closely linked to the campaign.

I looked through the financial filings of Leave.EU (now dissolved), Better for the Country Ltd (the legal parent of Leave.EU), Eldon Insurance (now Somerset Bridge Ltd), and Rock Services Ltd. Nowhere, across any of these entities, does the £8 million clearly appear in the form of a loan, donation, or political expense. No large cash transfers. No campaign spending to match the declared scale. And most importantly, no record of repayment for what Banks later claimed was a loan.

He has made various public statements over the years. On one occasion, he said the money came from Rock Services Ltd, a UK company. But that same company had previously been described by Banks as a treasury function. In the company’s own financial filings, Rock Services Ltd is listed as a “recharge service provider” for Rock Holdings, the offshore parent company based in the Isle of Man. This means it acted as a financial conduit, passing costs between entities. It did not itself generate income. So the question remains. How could a company that served as a cost-pass-through mechanism provide millions in political funding?

Another point cannot be overlooked. This means that Rock Services acts as a financial go-between. Either money flows from Rock Holdings into the UK, or vice versa. And both possibilities raise serious questions.

If Rock Holdings is making money from foreign investments or overseas clients, then UK political activity may have been funded with foreign-sourced money, something UK law explicitly forbids. If, on the other hand, Rock Holdings is funded through UK-based revenues, then it suggests UK wealth is being routed offshore, possibly to avoid tax or disclosure. In both scenarios, the structure lacks transparency, undermines public trust, and exposes a vulnerability in Britain’s political and financial systems.

One of Banks’s most repeated defences is that the money came from him personally. He told the BBC, “I am Rock Services,” suggesting that the company was simply a legal shell for his personal finances. But that claim does not hold up under scrutiny.

Rock Services Ltd is a limited liability company under UK law. That means it is a separate legal entity. The company’s finances are not his personal bank account. Any loan or donation issued by Rock Services would have been made by the company, not the man. And if it was later written off, that write-off came from the company’s books, not from his own pocket.

So when Banks says the money came from him, but it was legally routed through a limited company, he is conflating personal authority with corporate structure. It is a rhetorical manoeuvre designed to imply personal sacrifice, when in fact it may have been an entirely corporate transaction with strategic legal insulation.

Meanwhile, the Electoral Commission concluded that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that the true source of the funding may have been Rock Holdings, the offshore company. If that were true, the donation would not have been legal under UK law.

I want to be clear here. I haven’t been able to access the records of Rock Holdings. That’s because it’s registered in a jurisdiction that doesn’t require public financial disclosures. So I cannot confirm or deny whether the money came from there. But the UK entities I could access show no evidence that they issued the loan, received it, or paid it back.

I’ve examined every account I can access. The public has never seen documented proof of where the £8 million originated, how it was used, or how it moved between entities. What we do know is that £7 million of it was ultimately written off during the liquidation of Leave.EU Group Ltd. That means it was never repaid, despite being described as a loan. And the way that Leave.EU and Better for the Country Ltd were dissolved ensures that we may never know the full extent of the funding network. The paper trail stops cold. There is no access to internal data, no requirement to reveal major donors, no transparency for the public.

This isn’t about speculation. It’s about transparency.

There were also curious movements within the company’s leadership. Caroline Eleanor Katharine Drewett was appointed as a director of Better for the Country Ltd on 29 January 2016. On the very same day, she resigned. That level of sudden entry and exit during the run-up to a historic vote is unusual.

Elizabeth Bilney, a prominent figure in the campaign, also shifted roles, serving as both director and secretary before resigning as secretary just weeks before the referendum. Alison Marshall, who held the first director position when the company was incorporated, later disappeared from the filings as leadership changed hands.

These quick transitions, at a time of growing scrutiny and heightened financial activity, suggest more than routine admin. They suggest an effort to obscure responsibility or limit liability.

Equally troubling is how campaign resources were used. Internal emails leaked in 2017 suggest that staff at Eldon Insurance, Banks’s company, were working on the Leave.EU campaign during business hours. Effectively, this meant political activity was being subsidised with corporate resources, including staff time, infrastructure, and possibly data. That would amount to an undeclared contribution if not properly reported.

It’s also important to consider timing. Much of the £8 million was reported to have been spent before the official campaign period began, during which spending caps would have legally limited how much could be donated or used. By pumping in millions early, before the cap applied, Banks was able to amplify the campaign’s reach and influence during the crucial pre-regulation window. That may have been legal. But it raises serious questions about fairness and intent.

Other groups on the Leave side, including Vote Leave, were fined £61,000 for overspending after channelling money through youth group BeLeave in what the Electoral Commission ruled was coordinated campaigning.

The Remain campaign was not without fault. Some fines were issued, including £1,250 for Britain Stronger in Europe, but the scale was dramatically different. Remain’s total spend per vote was approximately £0.44. On the Leave side, when combining Vote Leave and Leave.EU, the figure rises to £0.83 per vote. Nearly double.

With a result as close as this, the impact of that extra spending cannot be ignored. Especially when a significant portion of it was never fully tracked.

And this is the point. I’m not making allegations. I’m asking questions. Questions that any functioning democracy should want answered.

Arron Banks has remained defiant throughout, stating there was no wrongdoing and no foreign money involved. But his credibility has come under serious question. He once said the money came from Rock Services. He also told Parliament that Rock Services did not generate income. He later said the donation came from his UK-based insurance operations. He also told the BBC that he was Rock Services, that the company was him, and therefore did not need to explain the money further.

These contradictions matter. Because when a man gives different stories to different authorities and then refuses to provide unredacted bank statements to support any of them, the question becomes not just where the money went, but what else is being concealed.

I’ve examined every account I can access. The public has never seen documented proof of where the £8 million originated, how it was used, or whether it was repaid. And the way that Leave.EU and Better for the Country Ltd were dissolved ensures that we may never know. The paper trail stops cold. There is no access to internal data, no requirement to reveal major donors, no transparency for the public.

Why were no charges brought when the Electoral Commission referred this to the National Crime Agency? Why was no full report published? And why, even today, can we not account for where that money came from or where it went?

This isn’t about Remain or Leave anymore. It’s about whether campaign finance laws can be trusted to protect democracy. Right now, they cannot.

If the rules can be sidestepped, if companies can be shut down to erase accountability, and if donors can contradict themselves without consequence, then money, not truth, is what wins elections.

And if that’s the case, the biggest question of all is not “Where did the £8 million go?”

It’s this. If no one can trace it, and the law has no way to follow it, then how can we ever be sure who really won?