Arron Banks

Arron Banks at a press conference with the BBC announcing his donation to UKIP, 1 October 2014

Arron Banks is a businessman who co-founded the Brightside insurance firms and runs GoSkippy.

He is also a UKIP donor, having previously donated to the Conservative Party.

Ukip defection

Banks was previously a Conservative Party donor but in October 2014 announced he would instead donate £1million to UKIP. He said he had switched because he agrees with UKIP's policies and their view that 'Europe is holding the UK back' as it's a 'closed shop for bankrupt countries'.

Despite being reported by the UK media, the £1 million donation to UKIP has not been recorded by the Electoral Commission.

A spokesman for Nigel Farage said that Banks had funded the Chipping Sodbury office for the South Gloucestershire Conservatives 'to the tune of £250,000'. However, a Conservative spokesperson said the support was 'nothing like the order of magnitude' of sums claimed by UKIP and estimated that the donations were about £22,000. A Ukip source said that he had also loaned £75,417 to Thornbury and Yate Conservative party via his former company Panacea Finance in September 2007, to be paid back by 2022. However, Companies House records show that Banks resigned from the company in September 2005, 'raising questions over whether he was controlling the firm at the time, or whether he was using the firm as a “proxy donor"'.

New party to replace UKIP without Farage

Millionaire UKIP donor Arron Banks has announced he is looking to forge a new party made up of UKIP, Labour and Conservative MP's, as the aftershock of the UK's Brexit vote on 23 June 2016 appears to spread from the main parties into UKIP. Banks felt he could harness the momentum of Brexit support in a new party outfit, and when asked if Nigel Farage would be leader, he replied he 'may have had enough.'

In the wake of Britain's withdrawal from the EU, Banks says, UKIP needs to be reformed root and branch, stating that the party's growth had given rise to various problems: 'Ukip grew so rapidly it had problems with personnel and all sorts of issues and I believe that could be better tackled with a new party.' He is considered to have made the biggest ever individual donation to a political cause in the UK, giving £5.6 million of his personal fortune to the Leave.EU campaign in the lead up to the UK's EU referendum.

A spokesman for Farage said the following of Banks: 'Arron is an entrepreneur in business and in politics. He is always looking for opportunities and there is certainly a huge opportunity for UKIP to grow significantly, with the sight of Labour deliberately and conscientiously abandoning its base, and the sight of so many people in the Conservative party reneging on the free movement of people.'

Over the entire campaign Banks' Leave.EU spent a total of £11 million, but because it was not the official campaign The Electoral Commission capped its expenditure at £700,000 within the official campaign window, ranging from 15 April 2016 and 22 June 2016. This means that Leave.EU needs to demonstrate that the other £10.3 million had been spent prior to the 15 April, and a spokesman for Leave.EU , Andrew Wigley, said 'there is nothing to hide.'

Spat with Hague

Upon Bank's defection to UKIP, Conservative MP William Hague called him 'somebody we haven't heard of'. In response, Banks upped his donation from £100,000 to £1million, claiming he did not like being called Mr Nobody.

Leave.EU

In April 2016, Private Eye revealed that Arron Banks controls 'Leave.EU', one of the key groups in the 'out' campaign for the referendum on Britain's EU membership. Banks, along with property investor Richard Tice and media guru Andrew Wigmore, donated £4.3m to the group. Private Eye also revealed eyebrow-raising links between Banks, his current wife Ekaterina Paderina and their local MP Mike Hancock, who supposedly spared her a sentence when she was being investigated for a sham marriage.

Attack website

Domain registration of LibLabCon.com, March 2015

Banks is funding, but not writing the stories, on an offensive website dedicated to attacking the three major parties, called LibLabCon. The website includes jokes about the treatment of religious people by the Conservatives and singles out half Nigerian Labour MP Chuka Umunna in another joke. The domain of the website was reportedly registered to Banks at the address of his firm, GoSkippy in Bristol - but now appears to be registered to an address in Godalming, Surrey.

UKIP told the Daily Mail the website is not linked to them but is funded by one of their main backers. UKIP policy chief, Tim Aker, also shared the website on Twitter saying, 'Now this is good'.

Tax avoidance

After his defection and donation to UKIP, Banks faced criticism for basing his business interests in tax havens, such as Gibraltar, and thereby avoiding UK tax laws. To counter these accusations, he released evidence that he paid £1.86million in British tax in 2013-2014.

One of the businesses in question was Rock Services Ltd, of which Banks is a director. It had a turnover of £19.7m in 2013 and paid corporation tax of £12,000. The company deducted £19.6m in 'administrative expenses.

When asked if his companies pay full corporation tax, he said: 'I paid over £2.5m of income tax last year [2013] so I’m not going to get knocked on that one, thank you very much. I really resented that, by the way. My insurance business, like a lot of them, is based in Gibraltar but I’ve got UK businesses as well that deal with customers and pay tax like everyone else.'

Charlie Elphicke, a Conservative MP and former tax lawyer, replied by saying: ‘Everyone knows that companies in tax havens like Gibraltar and Bermuda are often used to help minimise tax. This evidence raises serious questions about Mr Banks’s conduct and consistency of identity.'

BBC Question time

Following the HSBC tax avoidance revelations in February 2015, political satirist Armando Iannuci brought up Banks's foreign based companies and accused him of being a tax avoider. He said:

'UKIP has Arron Banks donating a million pounds, and he has got a company in Belize. He is the director of a firm that had a turnover of £19.7m but paid £12,000 in corporation tax because £19.6m was actually an administrative expense.'

In reply, Banks wrote Iannuci an open letter denying the accusations and threatening to sue if an apology is not received:

'Apparently some Italian / Scottish comedian accused me of being a tax dodger ! Here was my Dear Mr Lanucci,

I understand you mentioned me on question time in connection with the use of Belizean/ overseas companies to reduce my tax bill including a company in Belize and a service company.

I do not own any companies in Belize so this comment is clearly defamatory.

I believe it is recycling an old guardian story which was incorrect - I have made charitable donations to the Belize children's hospital and hosted a function for them.

This was for a cancer charity.

Meanwhile the service company mentioned is in respect of mainly UK staff and expenses incurred and does not save any UK tax.

The company does not produce revenue. I have created over 5,000 local jobs in South Gloucestershire and donated over a million pounds to charity including, local churches, facilities for schools, scouts, cubs, cricket and hockey clubs and local sports clubs in the area.

I paid £2m pounds in tax , over the last two years - probably more than most Italians one imagines.

Particularly funny ones. I do not own any Belizean companies or seek to avoid UK tax via any device - I expect an apology within 7 days or proceedings will follow.

Best regards

Arron

Ps love the thick of it !'

Business

According to Companies House records, Banks has set up 37 different companies using slight variations of his name. The names used by banks are, Aron Fraser Andrew Banks, Arron Andrew Fraser Banks, Arron Fraser Andrew Banks and Arron Banks. The profiles for the first three names all use the same date of birth but register different lists of companies. When asked by the Guardian about this, he declined to answer questions on the topic.

Diamond mines

Friends of Banks say that he has a controlling interest in a former De Beers diamond mine in Kimberley, South Africa and another licence to mine in Lesotho.

Political donations

Recorded by the Electoral Commission:

Date	Name of donor	Amount	Donated to	Subsidiary (parties only)
01/01/2007	Arron F Banks	£20,000.00	Conservative Party	Northavon
05/05/2009	Arron F Banks	£5,000.00	Conservative Party	Thornbury and Yate