Control, not ownership | Posh George: The criminal behind Farage Ep.3

At PWC, we optimize the systems that put your data to work, so you can scale your AI from proof of concept to competitive edge, and accelerate your tech evolution so you can redefine what's possible. From blueprint to breakthrough, we take you further with tech. So you can "outthink", "outpace" and "outperform". PWC. So you can. PWC refers to the PWC network and or one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. On a makeshift stage in Central London, far-right activist and former leader of the English Defence League, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known to his supporters as Tommy Robinson, is addressing a crowd of thousands. It's May 2018, and the crowds packed outside Downing Street are ostensibly here to protest limits on free speech. But they're also here for him. Robinson has just been banned from Twitter after breaching their guidelines on hateful content, by claiming Islam promotes killing people. Photos from the rallies show banners urging politicians to make Britain great again, activists posing for selfies, and just in the corner of the frame, a young man in a white t-shirt with blonde hair and sunglasses. Posh George. It's just over a year since George Kotroll was released from US prison. He told the judge he was going to return to education, and yet he is doing something rather different, pounding the pavement alongside members of the far-right. George Kotroll claims he wasn't at this rally to see Robinson, and instead only attended to hear another activist speak. But we understand that summer, Posh George lived a curious existence, drinking champagne and partying with Tommy Robinson in a circle, at a house their leader was paying for. Which is interesting, because Nigel Farage, George's close friend at former boss, has said he never wants to have anything to do with Tommy Robinson. In fact, in 2018, Farage resigned from UKIP for party he built up, because Robinson had been appointed as an adviser by a successor. They were attracted, a fairly, shall I say, loud-ish, fringe, and I don't think that Middlingland, decent people want to vote for a political party that is linked to extremism, violence, criminal records, and thuggery. So why was Posh George at Robinson's side? I'm Gabriel Pogrand. I run the Insight Investigation Team at the Sunday Times, and together with my colleagues, Benisha Mingus in Manu Medelo, we've spent the last few months trying to understand just how a convicted fraudster, with no official role in reform UK, has worked his way into the heart of British politics, standing by the man who could win the next election. From the Times and Sunday Times, this is Posh George, the criminal behind Farage. Episode 3. Control, not ownership. Tommy Robinson and Posh George spent time together as early as March 2018. After a rally on the edge of Hyde Park, Tommy Robinson's assistant at the time, recalls George-Cottrol joining Robinson and his team at the pub afterwards to raise a toast to a job well done. In an impeccable suit with a single family re-on his finger, George is described as ordering a bottle of champagne, and playing chicken over the final bill, with Tommy Robinson and their head of a right wing media outlet, Bright Bart UK. Two months later, Robinson would be arrested for breaching reporting restrictions by live streaming outside Leeds Crown Court during the trial of an alleged grooming gang. He was sentenced to 13 months in prison, supportive donations flooded in. Only while he was in prison I've been told, Tommy Robinson's team used that money to live it up in the richest part of London. And Posh George was long for the ride. So I'm just walking down Ponce Street, which is a pretty wide and extremely busy street in Belgrade. One of my insight colleagues on this investigation, Manu Midole, who has been tracing where this all happened. We are in possibly one of the most expensive parts of the country. We're used to be the heart of London grad, i.e. the playground for Russian oligarchs. People are shopping and drinking matcha, lattes, as they try not to get run over by big SUVs with blacked out windows. And it's here that Posh George's life takes another unexpected turn. George was spending the summer of 2018 hanging out with Tommy Robinson's closest associates, would use Robinson's credit card after Robinson had been arrested, to rent an Airbnb somewhere here on this street. They also use the card to buy crates of champagne, and not cheap champagne, either, Dom Perignon according to someone. And Posh George was here drinking champagne, chained smoking marbles, and chanting slogans in support of Tommy Robinson. That's the account we've been given from several sources who were there that summer. George Koch will deny spending time with Robinson's entourage and chanting slogans even as a joke. But according to one source, George claimed there was a reason he fraternised with Robinson's clique. To take the temperature of the whitest and angriest parts of British society. Nigel Fraud has always seen part of his role as reigning in overtly fascist politics. And Posh George suggested he was effectively conducting market research, giving Fraud's intelligence and an insider's account of the movement the former UKIP leader desperately wanted to understand, so we could use it for his own ends. Whatever the truth, Posh George drifted away from his new friends. And it wasn't long before George was back with his mentor Nigel Farage, raising money for a new political venture, the Brexit party. The Brexit party tops the polls in the EU elections with the Conservatives and Labour Party suffering heavy losses. But in the 2019 general election, they won just 2% of the votes and zero seats. I mean, look, you know, we're a new party, we've got no counsellors, we've got no base. You're a finished party. Well, over as a party. For George, British politics would now take a backseat while he focused on the finer things in life. In 2016, when Posh George was arrested in Chicago, the US court concluded he couldn't afford his own lawyer. Yet just a few years later, he was driving a Lamborghini, flying in private jets, and living in the penthouse of a five star hotel. How? It's August 2019, Nigel Farage can be found sipping champagne in short-sleeved striped shirt and sunglasses in the VIP section of a polar event. Posh George is next to him, inhaling a cigarette. And with them both is Posh George's new girlfriend, Georgia Toffalo. Toff for short, the star of the reality TV show Made in Chelsea, and I'm a celebrity queen of the jungle. Some people do maybe laugh at my interest in politics a tiny bit, because reality television doesn't tend to go hand in hand, maybe the blonde hair. Toff is in a pink dress, fanning herself from the heat. Because this isn't some manicured lawn in the Cotswells or the home counties, it's a place Posh George has made home. Tivat Montenegro. Well, a very warm welcome to Tivat. The local time here is 235 in the afternoon, which is where we're headed to. I've just arrived in Tivat Montenegro, and I'm literally sitting on the edge of the Adriatic coast. It's a beautiful day, very hot. I'm surrounded by huge green mountains. and the glistening sea with the boats lapping. And if I look just up the coast, I can see loads of super yachts, because this is where the millionaires come to play. My colleague Venetian Mingus had the terrible misfortune of having to fly out and witness this sunny port city up close. I mean, just walking along, we saw Fendi, Javonshi, loads of bougie restaurants, beautiful women taking photos for Instagram, and of course, the casinos. Right on the edge of the waterfront, and I'm talking just two or three streets, is Porto Montenegro Village. Now, 20 years ago, this was a shipyard. This is where Yugoslav submarines would be repaired. Today, it is a hub of super yachts. And this massive change all started in 2006 when Montenegro became an independent country and started to aggressively deregulate. Cheap fuel is one result, making it half the price to dock your yacht in Porto Montenegro. The people you bump into at events here wax a lyrical about the charm of this part of the world, the business opportunities. What's not to enjoy? I think beauty of this nature, where you have the seaside on one corner, and if you feel like going to the mountains, you're there in an hour and a half. All the Balkan area is in huge development. There's so much that can be done, and people with creativity, people with experience in entrepreneurship come here and definitely can make a huge difference. There are lots of rich brits here, they say, although they won't divulge who. There's confidentiality with that. The local journalists have a very different impression of Tiff Art and what it represents. My name is Andrea Perishic, and I'm a journalist at Centre for Investigative Journalism of Montenegro. I'm so glad that we met here in Tiff Art, which should be our best example of how Montenegro is developing country. But in my eyes, it's a symbol of corruption and organized crime. To Andrea, the Glitz and Glam is impossible to separate from what can lie beneath. And to understand why, I have to explain that post-George moves to Montenegro at a particular moment in the country's history. In 2020, the government of Montenegro changed following a democratic election for the first time ever. The country had also become a member of NATO and set itself on the path to EU membership. It was a moment of optimism for what the future could hold. We had a huge hope that Montenegro would somehow be more open and more democratic country, but it didn't happen. Many things continued in the same manner. I mean things related to corruption and organized crime. Just now with different names and with different people in position. And during this period of change, Montenegro welcomed pretty much any foreigner into the country for a fee. Ivan Ivanovich, his part of the Balkan investigative reporting network, burn. Tense of thousands of Russian citizens came here in Montenegro and they opened thousands of companies. Most of these companies actually existed only in paper because they employed only one worker. They had a little or no financial turnover. Companies could be registered with just one year row in starting capital and opening a company granted a residence permit. So the motive for starting business here was often not desire to invest but rather the easiest way to obtain the temporary residence. And any businessman could acquire Montenegro in passport if they invested a few hundred thousand euros into development projects in the country. Asking the European Union demanded be scrapped. And the main objections were the risk of money laundering, the possibility of people with suspicious backgrounds entering the country, get a passport. This program ended in 2022. But before that, post George was flying in and out of Tivat with the passport under a new name. It's not George Cottrell or the subtly different spelling he adopted at the point of his arrest in America on charges of wire fraud. Instead, it's a third name. George Co. And George Co, alongside a tiny group of trusted associates, became involved in a web of companies within companies and this tiny Balkan nation. It's a web we've been working to untangle. Let's give you just one example. I'm standing on a jetty and just ahead of me is the region Port Montenegro Hotel. It's in a sort of sea shape with a garden in the middle and a long pool on the first floor. Each floor has a wrap around balcony the building is painted a cream magnolia yellow. And right at the top on the left, I can see the Penthouse Suite number 501, which is where we believe post George's house is when he's here in Montenegro. Over the years numerous local articles have linked post George to this address. Girlfriends have posted photos posing on the balcony to Instagram and we've even seen a photo which shows that inside lies a copy of Nigel Farage's maiden speech from Parliament. It's described with a note in Farage's handwriting. George, thanks for everything. But proving this is actually post George's property is surprisingly tricky. Bear with me as I try and explain how this works. The Penthouse, which is unit number 501, was first owned by a local company, Citroe 501. The name's article instance, the company was literally set up to buy the flat. Citroe 501 was owned by Cotari Millionaire. But in 2020, just after post George arrived in Montenegro, something changed. An annotation was added to the deed of the Penthouse, saying it was recognised as belonging to someone called David Robbery. And David Robbery has known post George for quite some time. Back in 2011, not long after George had left school, he became a joint shareholder in a business which offered horse racing betting tips via a premium rate phone line. It wasn't a very professional outfit. The ancient website didn't contain any of the usual warnings that callers should be over 18, the sorts required by UK regulations. And it wasn't very popular either. The Twitter account of the business, Geogar Racing, has just one follower, a Mr. David Robbery. The man who held post George's flat. We've also established the Robbery lived literally next door to George's childhood home in a hamlet in the Worcestershire countryside. Robbery now lives in Tibet close to George once again. Then, in 2024, things changed again. Cydrify 01 was sold to global trust limited, a company based in the seashells. A company owned on paper by a Malaysian British accountant by the name of Hong Kong Yong. But once again, there's a link to George Cottrell. Because Hong Kong Yong worked next door to the Mayfair address, where post George got his financial education. If this all sounds very complicated, don't worry. That's the point. These ownership mechanisms are meant to be hard to follow. But George himself gives us an insight into soft structures. Because he wrote about it this year in a book called How to Launder Money. I'm sitting by the sea and I've got a bit of light holiday reading with me. And it's written by a George Cottrell and his co-author Lawrence Burke Files. One particularly interesting excerpt reads the following. Control is 100% better than ownership. The businesses we believe post George's involved in operate beneath layers of trusts, companies and ownership. And interact with companies which have potentially operated illegally in the UK. At PWC, we optimize the systems that put your data to work so you can scale your AI from proof of concept to competitive edge. And accelerate your tech evolution so you can redefine what's possible. So you can outthink, outpace and outperform. PWC. So you can. PWC refers to the PWC network and the network. or one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. By 2019 then, post-George is living the High Life by the seaside and the super yacht of Montenegros Adriatic coastline. But his life there is hidden behind the layers of paperwork. Even George's home is officially owned by someone else, someone you'd never know is connected to him without insider knowledge. And the same it seems is true of the businesses George Kotrol is involved in. There's only one company called Private Family Office that's registered in Montenegros under the name George Koeh or George Kotrol. There are several more on by his associates, whose offices around the Scruffier Streets on the edge of Tivart often seem abandoned. I can see that the windows haven't even been fitted. There appears to be no working electrics and absolutely nobody home. But there's one business in particular I want to focus on, probably the most lucrative. Because when George moved to Montenegros, he turned to his old pastime, gambling. The vice which got him expelled from school and the addiction which for US court heard led him to be convicted of fraud. In late 2020 a new venture was launched called tether.bat. It's a website, a kind of cross between a bookies and a casino, where punters can place bets on sports or politics or play online games. And it has a pretty simple USP. In the UK there are stringent checks designed to stop certain people betting. That may be professional gamblers who are too successful to be worth accepting wages from, but they're also meant to protect addicts and target criminals. But because tether.bat isn't based here, it doesn't have to comply with the UK standard for the so-called "no-your-customer" checks. Nor does it place conventional limits on how much you can gamble. Instead it claims to offer the highest limit anytime anywhere on every sport. And the stakes are taken in cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Ethereum, tether, digital money which operates outside traditional banking. Post George denies any financial interest in tether.bat and proving even his involvement leads once again into a tangled web. Part of that is because tether.bat isn't a company. It is, those behind it say, a platform, a collection of entities which sprawl across jurisdictions. It employs staff from Montenegro and Nigeria, holds a gambling license in the Caribbean nation of Curacao and processes its payments through Cypress. But at each point there are clues that illustrate George's involvement. Tether.bat ends a number of web domains, including for one of Post George's long term girlfriend. The company which owns George's penthouse and several other businesses we believe he's connected to, has had Tether.bat content recently added to the back end of their website, not visible to the public. And the real tale is the people. Over the course of months we've tracked down those on both sides of the transaction, the individuals who placed Bets with tether.bat and, critically, those who worked for it. All confirmed that Post George was heavily involved, part of the tiny group who've been with tether.bat since the beginning. Which is a little awkward, because tether.bat is not licensed to operate in the United Kingdom. Yet I've spoken to a source who claimed Post George approached them at a club in May fair, asking if they might like to bet with the site. He through lawyers denies soliciting any clients for tether.bat. Papers from a high court case are led to the same. Now an interest of fairness, Post George wasn't a party to this case, so he's not been invited to respond. But the claimant, a professional gambler, says that Post George tried to find clients for tether.bat in England and Wales and that this made him uncomfortable because of the regulatory rules. And my colleague at the time, Investigations reporter George Greenwood, has found something else. So I've been a bit obsessed with this story since about 2023. Some on a news organization worked with before, out of the blue, he gave me a call then and said, have you been looking at what's been going on in Montenegro? And I started looking into that world and the story it turned out was tether.bat. George started looking into who was gambling with tether.bat and how they were doing it. And I came across something that I wasn't really expecting and fine. There's a company in the UK called Global G-Corp and I'd be able to establish from evidence that I've seen that some bets that were intended to be made through tether.bat were directly paid through this UK company. Wow. And that's a problem because under the Gambling Act any gambling activity that takes place through UK companies or the UK Nexus needs to be licensed. But we're not aware of any UK license that Global G-Corp or any related entities had that would allow them to conduct this activity. There are exemptions to the requirement for license but it's not obvious to me that any of those apply here. And what kind of company is this? It's a standard UK limited company but what's so interesting is how weaknesses in UK company laws mean there's never had to file public accounts. So there's no way to track the money flowing through it. What's also interesting is that the owner of the company is not George Kotrel but one of his very close friends David Robrie. Oh well we know David Robrie because he owned a property in the same tiny collection of cottages that post George grew up in and also his name rather intriguingly appears in one of the corporate filings for the company that held post George's penthouse. And I also found another company which appeared to be used as a middleman in the sense of course this pay. And was that doing the same sort of stuff? It appears so yes we've seen examples of bets that were intended to be made on tether.bet where the clients were directed to make the payments through Vizepay. And our understanding of how tether.bet worked was that you could either make your stakes in cryptocurrency or through these transfers to one of these UK bank accounts and that your stake would then be paid out if you won your bet through cryptocurrency or again from one of these bank accounts. And who are they run by? This is another fellow a guy called Ian Mobray Jackson and he's interesting because he actually works for reform UK. He's a day's protection officer there. Right. And he's a good friend of a natural forages and other colourful characters such as Liz Hurley. And what did maybe Jackson and David Robrie say when you approached him with this? Both the clients comment a source close to Jackson said he would need to obtain legal advice, source close to Robrie denied any wrongdoing and said his company had never actually traded. So we've got a the wilderness complex corporate structure that together constitutes tether.bet and we've got UK companies acting as middlemen in relation to bets placed with tether.bet. What is the actual advantage or potential benefit of this whole endeavour? So when you're running these kind of operations you need to put the betting infrastructure together with the high net worth gamblers and actually it can be quite difficult to get money into Montenegro bank account. It might flag up controls on banks and things like that. So it may have just been a shortcut. They may have been cock up rather conspiracy and they may have decided to just use a UK company for ease but that may come back to haunt them in the gambling commission size they could look. So yes how serious is what you've just discovered? Well it can be very serious indeed the gambling act is not a piece of regulation or guidance it is the law and so the company has been operating any gambling operation that could be in breach of these laws they could be in a lot of trouble and that could go up to anything including criminal penalties. And it's a criminal offense to run an online licence gambling operation in the UK without some sort of exemption it's a criminal offense. This is a massive moment for us it's the first indication we've had that posh George is involved in a crypto gambling platform implicated in potentially illegal betting in the UK. George Kotchel disputes the allegations he says he only used Heather Doddbett and had no other role. He adds he has no knowledge of any payments in global G-core, Fist Pay Limited or Tether Doddbett. Tether Doddbett's lawyers say its record showed no funds from global G-core limited or Fist Pay Limited being received, processed by or credited to Tether Doddbett. It also states that where users have broken the platform's rules of conduct it's time to allow it to withhold funds. While posh George is in Montenegro he can't help but be drawn back into public life. He becomes entangled with the party which wants to help the country join the EU. The very thing George and Farage have spent so much time campaigning again. We just have the problem with this guy who his name is Kotrel and they have some connection with the current Prime Minister. Post George is accused of providing them with illegal funds and swept up once more in a police investigation. While making this podcast series we approach both George Kotrel and Nigel Farage. George Kotrel says his support of Mr Farage is the result of friendship and shared political ideology, not any hope or expectation of receiving anything in return. Nigel Farage described Mr Kotrel as a longstanding friend. Both deny any wrongdoing. You've been listening to Post George, the criminal behind Farage, with me Gabriel Pogrand, along with Venisha Mingus and Manu Midevo. With a special thanks on this episode to George Greenwood, investigations reporter at the times. This series is produced in exec by Will Rowan Kate Landball. The assistant producer is Killefountain, sound designed by Tiffany Dimack. He's a theme title and original music by Adam Forren and the head of podcast at the Times of Dambox. At PWC we optimize the systems that put your data to work so you can scale your AI from proof of concept to competitive edge and accelerate your tech evolution so you can redefine what's possible. PWC. So you can. PWC refers to the PWC network and all one or more of its member firms each of which is a separate legal entity.