‘Like a
son to me’: George Cottrell, the high-rolling convicted fraudster at Nigel
Farage’s side
Extravagant
lifestyle and past controversies of Montenegro-based volunteer raise awkward
questions for Reform leader
Emine
Sinmaz, Dan Sabbagh and Rowena Mason
Wed 3 Jul
2024 17.31 BST
It’s an
enigma at the heart of Nigel Farage’s general election campaign: why has a
30-year-old businessman, self-confessed high-stakes gambler and convicted
fraudster flown in from a glamorous Balkan resort to act as his unpaid aide?
George
Cottrell was at Farage’s side when the Reform UK leader was milkshaked on the
campaign trail in Clacton, and on a private helicopter flight with him from
Ashfield in Nottinghamshire to London. Cottrell was there at a London hotel,
ear glued to his phone, as Farage hosted a press conference. He also pitched up
in Merthyr Tydfil for the party’s manifesto launch in Wales.
Reform says
Cottrell is just one of many party volunteers on the campaign trail, but his
extravagant lifestyle and past controversies raise some awkward questions for
Farage.
Those who
have followed the election campaign in Clacton, the Essex coastal town where
Farage is making his eighth attempt to become an MP, describe Cottrell as
integral to the operation – frequently physically close to the leader and his
two-man security detail, as shown in Channel 4 footage of the core group
leaving a campaign headquarters.
One
photograph from earlier in the campaign shows Cottrell in a beer garden in
Clacton with Farage. Both men are in similar poses: smoking and on the phone, a
few yards apart.
Reform UK
party leader Nigel Farage reacts after a woman threw a drink over him, as he
launches his election candidacy at Clacton Pier on June 4, 2024 in
Clacton-on-Sea, England
The British
locations are a far cry from Cottrell’s usual lifestyle. He is said to drive a
£300,000 Lamborghini, stay in an £8m townhouse when in London and to have taken
Westminster friends including Farage out to his home in Montenegro by private
plane from London’s Biggin Hill airport.
Cottrell,
who was born in Britain, moved to the tiny Balkan country some time after 2017
when he was convicted in the US and then spent eight months in an American jail
after being accused of offering money-laundering services on the dark web. He
served time for a single count of wire fraud after 20 other charges were
dropped as part of a plea deal.
He is now a
familiar figure in the luxurious coastal resort of Porto Montenegro, where he
mostly lives, with its gleaming marina a haven for the super-rich with shiny
mega-yachts, upmarket restaurants and designer shops such as Dior and Rolex.
Sources told
the Guardian he had entertained friends at a villa during trips to the country,
with one particular bedroom favoured by Farage, although he reportedly owns a
more modest apartment at the five-star Regent Porto Montenegro hotel.
Cottrell’s
time in Montenegro has not been without controversy. Last month, he reportedly
lost €20m (£16m) in a single poker game, which sparked a public row with his
former girlfriend Andjela Vukadinovic, the reigning Miss Montenegro.
Speaking to
the Guardian in Montenegro a fortnight ago, Vukadinovic, 23, said Cottrell and
Farage were “very close”.
“[George]
respects him so much. He always talks about him like Nigel is No 1 for him. So
it’s all about Nigel. I mean earlier, it wasn’t that much, like he was
mentioning him every day but it was fine for me. But the last three, four
months he mentions him all the time,” said Vukadinovic, a Miss World hopeful.
Cottrell is
also known for his links to the political scene of Montenegro, including the
country’s now prime minister, Milojko Spajić, and his Europe Now! Movement. As
Spajić was on the brink of power last year, a search and arrest warrant was
sought against Cottrell in relation to accusations that he was illegally
financing the party.
His lawyers
said a presiding magistrate rejected the request as being without basis and
“part of a political game” and described the episode as part of a political
disinformation campaign because of Cottrell’s links to the insurgent
politician.
Vukadinovic
said Cottrell had been close to Spajić, who she had previously met in Porto
Montenegro, but that they had drifted apart this year. “I don’t know why, what
happened there. [George] doesn’t want to speak about that – I asked him a few
times, which is weird for me,” she said.
Cottrell’s
business in Montenegro is registered as a company called Private Family Office,
set up under the name George Co. He used the same name on a passport when he
flew by private jet last summer, according to the Montenegrin newspaper
Vijesti. Lawyers for Cottrell said he had official permission to use the
shortened name for reasons related to his personal safety.
‘Posh
George’
Cottrell, a
Gloucester-born aristocrat, was privately educated on the luxury Caribbean
island of Mustique followed by Malvern college in Worcestershire.
Nicknamed
“Posh George” by the Brexit campaign donor Arron Banks, Cottrell was previously
a volunteer for Farage in 2016, at the age of 22, after being introduced by his
aristocratic uncle Lord Hesketh, a former treasurer of Reform’s predecessor
party Ukip, according to Banks’s memoir.
He was with
Farage on the night of the Brexit referendum when he sensed a gambling
opportunity. “At 10pm, I couldn’t believe I was still getting 9/1 [for a
majority leave vote],” he told the Telegraph newspaper afterwards. “We were in
our campaign office and I was tracking all the major stock indices, the dollar
and pound currency markets. When it got to 3am, I was getting my managers out
of bed to get me another 50 grand on here, another 50 grand there, to short
sterling. I just couldn’t help myself.”
Cottrell
claimed to have won a six-figure sum from shorting the pound but said he
promptly “lost most of it the next day” on a horse.
Later that
year, Farage was present when Cottrell was arrested on money-laundering charges
in the US as the pair were preparing to return to Britain after the Republican
convention.
Banks’s
memoir recalls that Cottrell was initially detained on the way out and they
thought it was because he was “from a very wealthy family and routinely carries
around thousands of pounds”.
After he was
arrested, Banks wrote: “Nasty shock today as Nigel got Posh George’s full rap
sheet. It’s not pretty. He’s been indicted on 21 counts of crimes including
money laundering, wire fraud and blackmail.” He added that he thought Cottrell
was “very young and I suspect he’s been caught up in something way over his
head”.
A judge in
Arizona jailed Cottrell for eight months after he ultimately pleaded guilty to
one count of wire fraud as part of a plea deal under which the other charges
were dropped. The crime was committed in 2014, before he worked for either the
anti-EU party or Farage, who once described Cottrell as “like a son to me”.
In an
interview with the Times in 2017, Cottrell’s mother, Fiona, said reports that
her son was wealthy enough to have a £250m trust fund were “ridiculous,
absolute rubbish”.
After coming
out of prison, Cottrell talked about having made his living before 2016 working
for offshore banks, including “enabling and promoting aggressive tax avoidance
programmes”.
His lawyers
have said he does not have access to family money, but has made his
considerable wealth by working since the age of 17 – and that he no longer
works for offshore banks on tax avoidance schemes but has a portfolio of
investments.
After the
2017 conviction, Farage appeared to distance himself from Cottrell, saying he
could not be accountable for everything people around him got up to. But the
pair have been photographed together several times since then, once in
Montenegro at a polo match in 2019, again having lunch in west London in 2021
with Cottrell’s former on-off girlfriend Georgia Toffolo, a reality star and
influencer, and again at Scott’s restaurant in Mayfair this year.
Vukadinovic
said Cottrell had been gearing up to support Farage over the last few months
but that she had no idea what his role was. “It’s something about Nigel’s
campaign, that’s all I know because I don’t ask too much. I’m not really
interested in that job. So he’s full-time there [in the UK] preparing Nigel for
that I guess,” she said.
Vukadinovic,
who met Cottrell at a bar in Tivat, where Porto Montenegro is located, three
years ago, said she was present after he lost €20m in the Triton poker series,
a high-stakes tournament held at the five-star Maestral casino resort in Budva
on the Adriatic coast.
She said he
gambled away the money over several hours in the VIP room, emerging a few times
to update her. She said she left after trying to warn Cottrell, who admitted in
an interview with the Telegraph in 2017 to having a gambling problem in his
youth that he later kicked.
Vukadinovic,
who was at the resort, said she believed Cottrell had been playing against
Chinese billionaires and celebrities. “It was maybe five, six, seven hours, he
was all the time on the same table [playing poker] in the private room,” she
said. “He was like losing, winning, losing, winning. And I was like, ‘this is
gonna be a disaster’ – and it was.”
He has also
been a regular customer at the Salon Privé, a private members’ club and casino
in Tivat, and has brought friends from the UK to the casino. Last year police
tried to raid the casino, looking for a crypto machine. Such machines are used
to buy and sell cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
The casino’s
lawyers told the Vijesti Online publication at the time that the crypto machine
had been legally acquired for legitimate cryptocurrency trading.
Cottrell has
repeatedly said he has no financial ties to the casino and company records show
it is owned by a Malaysian accountant from London. Cottrell’s lawyers said he
was aware of reports that a crypto machine had been imported but that he had
never operated such a machine.
One
businessman in Tivat described Cottrell as a friend and client since 2017 and
told how he met Farage and Toffolo through him. He sang Cottrell’s praises
saying: “I have nothing bad to say against him. He’s very polite, very nice and
very friendly. He is a perfect British gentleman. He’s a 10 out of 10.”
Cottrell
declined to comment on the record. Reform and Farage were also approached for
comment.
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