Arron Banks ‘bankrolled Nigel Farage’s lavish lifestyle with £450,000 funding’, investigation finds

Ex-Ukip ally paid for £4.4m rented London home, a luxury car, a bodyguard, a private office and trips to the United States, says Channel 4 probe

Arron Banks bankrolled a lavish lifestyle for Nigel Farage, including a £4.4m rented London home, a luxury car, a bodyguard, a private office and trips to the United States, an investigation has found.

Channel 4 News uncovered documents revealing the multimillionaire spent around £450,000 funding his former Ukip ally in the year following the 2016 Brexit referendum, it reports.

Mr Banks dismissed the revelations as an attempt “to smear myself and Nigel” – while Mr Farage insisted there had been no funding of his new Brexit Party.

But Channel 4 said its investigation showed Mr Banks had, after June 2016:

* Rented Mr Farage an exclusive £4.4m Chelsea home, through one of his companies, paying for furniture plus council tax, water and electricity bills.

* Provided a Land Rover Discovery car, valued at £32,300, plus £20,000 for a “close protection driver”.

* Leased private office space for £1,500 a month and paid Mr Farage’s personal assistant.

* Spent hundreds of thousands of pounds promoting “Brand Farage” in America, allowing him to attend the Republican National Convention and address a Donald Trump rally.

* Paid a Fox News anchor £11,305.41 to interview Mr Farage at the convention.

* Paid more than £15,000 to fly Mr Farage to and from Washington for Mr Trump’s inauguration, plus £1,000 on a room at the plush Mayflower Hotel.

The programme, being broadcast on Thursday evening, points out Mr Banks remains under investigation by the National Crime Agency over the source of his funding for the Brexit campaign.

He was referred to police by the Electoral Commission over evidence of “multiple” criminal acts. The watchdog suggested he was “not the true source” of £8m of donations to the Leave.EU campaign.

Mr Banks’s companies are also being investigated by the Information Commissioner’s Office, and Leave.EU was fined for breaching electoral rules in the referendum campaign.

Channel 4 said it made repeated requests to Mr Farage to answer the questions raised by its investigation but he refused, saying “no comment” at an event on Wednesday.

In a statement to the programme, Mr Banks said: “Channel 4 attempts to smear myself and Nigel come at a time when the Brexit Party is riding high in the polls, so it should come as no surprise to anyone.”

Mr Farage’s new outfit is poised to win next week’s European elections, the Conservatives having lost one-third of their vote share since March, the latest poll has suggested.

In a series of investigations, Channel 4 has previously reported that Mr Banks flouted an agreement to suspend Brexit campaigning after the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox.

He ordered the Leave.EU team to “up the spend” on Facebook and “press it harder”, emails showed in March – the morning after the killing that shocked the nation.