Crypto politics | Posh George: The criminal behind Farage Ep.4

It's September 2023. Traped across a leather sofa between a globe and a statue of a horse, a young woman is conducting a photo shoot for her Instagram. Angela Vukodinovich is wearing a green floor length gown, every inch covered in DM&T sparkles. On her head is an ornate crown. She's celebrating being named "Mess Montenegro". "Wornt me swerved Montenegro 2023. I'm born on 28 September 2000." Vukodinovich moves around the room, stopping to pose in front of a picture of the author Henry James. She's in Salon Preve in Teevaz, which, according to its website, is Montenegro's first private members club. Their tagline proudly reads, "Some places you visit, others you belong to." Her boyfriend, George Kotrill, by this point no longer with George Atophila, have made in Chelsea fame, is a member. Salon Preve is also a casino. Quite a famous one in town. There are glamorous adverts for it as you queue to get through the border at the airport, and they sponsor the local football team. And as here, in June 2023, the police came and seized a crypto ATM. And posh George would soon be facing serious allegations in the local press. I'm Gabriel Pogrand. I run the Insight Investigations team at the Sunday Times. And together with my colleagues Vinny Shamingis and Manu Mideolo, we've spent the last few months trying to understand how a convicted fraudster with no official role in a reform UK has worked as a 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 forage. Episode 4. Crypto politics. When George set up his new home in Nebulcans in 2019 and started using the name George Coe, one of the first people to come and visit him was Nigel Farage. This 62-year-old and joined his young friend's hospitality, going to Pode matches with him in the Sun-Cast port. There have always been lots of questions about posh George in his past, many of which remain unanswered. Trust, judgment and transparency are central to politics. And during his time in Montenegro, George, a convicted fraudster, attracted unwanted scrutiny. Scrutiny that Nigel Farage would ultimately have to address. Now, Montenegro is famous for its low tax and has become a place where crypto enthusiasts have flocked, creating a bit of a Bitcoin boom. Local journalists such as Ivan Ivanovich have followed that money. More than two billion dollars past truck crypto wallets associated with Montenegro and IP address between November 2021 and November 2022. Ivan has for that period its almost the whole budget for the entire country. He told us crypto is used to buy things like houses and cars, transactions completely outside the country's tax or legal system. George Coe, is a big crypto guy. And when he based himself in Montenegro, he became involved in the bookmaker, tether.bet, which takes bets in digital currencies. Let's take a step back for a moment and look at the politics of crypto. Most mainstream politicians in the west have been cautious about digital currency, worried that they operate outside traditional financial markets. But George's ally Farage doesn't see it that way. The most influential Bitcoin and crypto politician flew over here. Please everybody out of your seats give this man a round of applause to get the start of us. Nigel, thank you for joining us here at Bitcoin 2025. Wow, thank you so much. In recent years Farage has become a vocal champion of crypto. I'm thrilled to be here today, but to announce that rather than just words, we have put together, and this is exclusive for today, the crypto assets and digital finance bill. This is one of the most detailed policies the reform UK leader has outlined in his bid to become the UK's next PM. We will campaign for this and we'll put it in place when we win the next general election. It echoes what's been happening in the United States. That we would bring back American liberty and leadership and make the United States the crypto capital of the world and that's what we've done and under the Trump administration. This is only going further. In Montenegro, it became a hot topic. In 2023, it was an election year. The then finance minister Milo Kospajic, who was part of the coalition government, was running to be prime minister. The idea of spying in the beginning months was to make the crypto paradise here in Montenegro. And he was a whole new leader. This is Dretana Bazavic, one of Spikes's political rivals, although Bazavic maintains they've always been friendly with each other. I am former prime minister of Montenegro. Also before that, I was the deputy prime minister responsible for the security. He spoke to my colleague, Venisha Mingus, at his office in the country's capital Podgaritza. This is not good that Montenegro be recognized like a country who is the paradise for some unclean money, unclean capital, many money laundering. Have you seen much in terms of the British political sphere? From the British political sphere, we just have the problem with this guy, whose name is Kotrel, who is also recognized like a person who is this crypto-friendly and working with this kind of crypto society. When do you think the first time was that you heard the name George Kotrel? That was in 2023. I didn't know who is the guy. This was not something which was interesting for us, until we start to make, let's say, more clear monitoring to the crypto community in the country. In 2023, Dreetan Abbasovic was the incumbent prime minister. Spyich, the finance minister who wanted to make Montenegro crypto paradise, was part of a party called Europe now. Light Ron Seal, the name does what it says on the tin. It wants Montenegro to join the European Union. And Spyich knew. Posh George. The pair was seen drinking and dining together at waterfront bars in Tivat, between 2022 and 24. Hello and welcome to Across the Balkans. Now in March of 2023, authorities arrested a member of the Montenegro crypto community. One of the world's most wanted fugitives, South Korean national Doe Kwon, following his arrest in Montenegro. The famous cryptocurrency boss was trying to escape to the Union. It was a South Korean entrepreneur known as Doe Kwon, who was behind two digital currencies that had collapsed. Investors lost an estimated 40 billion dollars in what US judges would call an "epic fraud". A few months after his arrest, just days before the general election, while Doe Kwon was awaiting a tradition, he penned a handwritten letter to prime minister Abbasovic from his prison cell. Doe Kwon claimed friends in the crypto industry had helped fund Spyich's campaign in return for pledges of crypto-friendly policies. Spyich called the accusation "super fake" and part of a dirty political game. But Doe Kwon claimed the evidence was on a laptop. It created plenty of headlines. He said that the evidence are in the laptop which police take it from him, but that laptop never was opened in Montenegro. This laptop, what happened to it? I don't know, but when he leaves to America, everything will get kind of everything's going to be scheme. Doe Kwon was extradited in sentence to 15 years in prison, and the laptop is now with the US authorities. It's the Friday night we're on the seafront in Tivant. The music is pumping. People are sipping cocktails on the palm tree terraces, kicking back. Here's the beginning of the weekend after all. And in one corner is the entrance to Salon Preve. The private members club sign glows in neon white. My colleague Venetia is making her way in. There's a row of betting terminals, a bar and a private VIP room where Miss Montenegro had been posing on Instagram. It's kind of underwhelming. For all I've heard about Salon Preve, I was surprised to find that it's actually a rather dingy, dark, small room. There weren't any crew pAs, there weren't any roulette tables. There were perhaps a dozen betting terminals and even fewer customers. And the reason that I was there, the reason I went to this place Salon Preve is that this is the location where in 2023 there was an illegal cryptocurrency ATM. It was here that offices came and took the crypto ATM. Now a crypto ATM works like this. You put physical cash into it, which it then converts into cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin and Ethereum and adds to your crypto wallet. In the UK the financial conduct authority says using one only supports crime. For all the talk from the crypto community that it opens up finance and makes it more democratic, it's very hard to monitor and check digital wallets which sit outside the traditional banking systems, not least when they've been loaded up with money via debit card or cash in an unduragulated corner of the Balkans. Most countries do not allow the use of cryptographic political parties or politicians. But in June of 2023 local media reported that politicians had accused post George of two things, owning the crypto ATM and funding spyaches campaign. Another report was that two reform UK staff flew over to help revamp spyaches campaign. The social media consultants admitted they were with Europe now, but said it was unpaid voluntary. George Kotroll denies any involvement in Montenegrin politics and owning or being involved with the crypto machine. Kotroll's lawyers told us the allegations were part of a politically motivated disinformation campaign instigated by an outgoing administration to smear the leading party Europe now. They say a petition from the then minister of internal affairs to the local prosecutor to issue warrants was refused. They say George Kotroll has never made any political denation to Mr. Spyich or his party. Suddenly though a headline in stories in the press about this well-dressed British aristocrat who was friends with Nigel Farage being accused of waiting into Montenegrin politics. So what did George do? When Kotroll was being investigated about this crazy happenment. Yes, he lived a ganchine dead moment, he lived a Montenegro. George Kotroll says he regularly travels to and from Montenegro and denies any suggestion left the country to avoid scrutiny. Spyich won the election. The Europe now movement led by Milico Spyich has come out on top. But it would take months and negotiations before he could form a government. And then there headlines around his funding kind of well faded away. In recent years Spyich, at least publicly, no longer talks about Montenegrin's crypto paradise. Instead, focusing on joining the EU. Everybody thought that's absolutely impossible, that's not going to happen. But I think people are becoming less skeptical. One question I have is why would post George, the man who was treasurer of UKIP in 2014, who campaigned for Brexit back in 2016, who raised money for the Brexit party and still supports reform UK. And who is, let's we forget Nigel Frage's closest ally. Why would he be associated with Spyich? He had the pro-EU party. Why was he whining and dining with them? These people who are from that most of them, I don't say now for Kotroll because I don't know him personally. But most of these people who are from that part of population who are knowing this crypto, things big businesses, real estate markets, Dubai Emirates, working this investment, they look into politics just like a toy which is used for the business. Via his lawyers, post George told us he meets a range of politicians from a range of parties. Spyich has always denied any funding from the cryptocurrency community and his election bid. Now the story of the Crypt of ATM, well, it's about to get even more interesting. I'm in the back streets of T-vats and I'm standing outside number 22A on a street called Pali Baraka. Now this is the address of Kotroll's once lawyer Mr. Ratco Pantovich. It's a six-story residential building looking very rundown. And if you google this address, rather than a website for the lawyer Mr. Pantovich, what you find is an entry on a website, CoinATM Radar, which locates where they're cryptocurrency ATMs. And on a picture on that website, you can see a sign advertising both Mr. Pantovich's law firm and global financial solutions, another of the company's link to Kotroll. But standing here, I can see the signs have been removed. This location was at the centre of a media storm after the cryptocurrency ATM was seized. We've spoken to contacts who claim that prior to this police inspection at the Casino Sellon Prive, they'd seen the same ATM inside this lawyer's office. Today, there's no one there. The signs are gone. Mr. Ratco Pantovich, the lawyer whose offices these were, has since died. But he didn't just represent Post George. He was also the lawyer for Hong Kong Young, the man whose company owns George's Montenegro and Pant House. The man George Kotroll has always claimed owned at ATM. And this is interesting because it's also the reds to address of a business owned by Reform UK's biggest donor. The man who gave £5m to Nigel Farage, Mr. Faharborn. I understand that Nigel Farage is now facing an investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Daniel Greenberg, after news about the gift, as the former UK have termed it, from Christopher Harbourn, a tie-based billionaire crypto investor, to Nigel Farage just before the 2024 general election. And the connection between Harbourn, the mega crypto donor, and Post George, is one worth trying to untangle. A source has told me that George has privately based it of being placed to Harbourn. In the summer of 2020, George was in May for lunching. Impeccably dressed as ever, he'd done the blue suit with a light blue tie. A pack of cigarettes by his side, George enjoyed a glass of red day for lunch, while Harbourn and Farage chuckled away. A few days later, Tether.Betver set up, the gambling platform George has involved in. As the name suggests, the bookmaker accepts bets in various crypto currencies, foremost among them, one called Tether. And one of the owners of that digital currency, according to US court documents, is Christopher Harbourn. Is 2024? Spyich is in power, the accusations of funding have drifted away, and George is happily back in Montenegro. What's the paper that this is published in? and daily paper done. -Inviscative journalist Ivan Ivanovitch has shown Venetra copy of a local tabloid newspaper for a may of that year, in one corner is a cold case crime story, -and it's still Remain a soul. OK, he was investigating smartly. -The main story features a big photo of posse George. He's standing, smoking a cigarette, shades on, why open-coded shirt and a suit. -There is a headline, controversial, multimillionaire lost a large amount of money in Kazin in Budva, which has lost 20 millions in poker game. George was from Page News for gambling away $20 million in one go. a Ticacino in the Montenegro City of Budfa, which featured in the James Bond film "Cocino Royale". His reporter George was at the poker tables in his high-states game till 7am in the morning. He later brought to the High Society magazine Tatler that he'd actually lost $53 million. Christ! I've spoken to sources that say this is at least partially an act. And the British journalist, Goss Carter, who interviewed him in Tatler, mused, "At the time, it seemed strange that he was so happy to talk about such losses. Now I understand that Kotrol wanted to signal that he was a high roller, and a high roller that loses. But makers are more than happy to take bets from someone like that." Apparently, Angela Vukodidovich, Miss Montenegro, who was now George's ex, was not too pleased. When we at the Insight team approach Miss Montenegro for this podcast series, she simply told us, "I'm not allowed to speak about him. We spoke." The "we spoke," we guess, means the power in contact about our approach. Today, George is still flying in and out of Tivat. This podcast series is trying to understand how a convicted fraudster has worked his way into the heart of British politics. But I guess another question is, how has he stayed there? And what does that tell us about Night or Farage? In 2023 and 24, George attracted a lot of negative press in Montenegro. Some of it seat back here. "Mr. Farage, when you say, 'our culture,' I think many of our viewers." In June of 2024, less than a month out from the UK general election, Nigel Farage is standing in front of Clackton Pier in Essex, doing a live TV hit with the BBC. With a ferris wheel in the background and the sun streaming in that Sunday morning, in the final question from the studio, Farage is asked about a report I'd written. "Today is carrying a story about one of your aides and colleagues, George Cottrell, who has a conviction for wire fraud in the America and has been named in another criminal investigation in Montenegro. Do you want him by your side on the campaign trail?" "I firstly, always stand by my friends, and secondly, there is a thing called Christian forgiveness. If people get convicted of something or do something wrong, well, they have another chance in life and to go on and prove themselves." "Mr. Farage, thank you very much." Just like in early 2017, when Post-Georgia was facing jail time, Farage chose to stick by his guy. In 2024, when Farage was on the campaign trail and his bid to become an MP, a woman stepped out of the crowd of adorant supporters and threw a milkshake in his face. Post-Georgia was, as you'd expect, right by his side, shepherding Farage away into the Reform UK campaign bus. Farage would win his seat. "Farage Nigel Paul, Reform UK, 21,000, 20,000, 25." You finally become an MP. A lifelong ambition, but also a key detail in this story. George has helped support Farage financially over the years, but now as an MP, the scrutiny is more focused. In recent years, we, the Sunday Times Insight team, can reveal, Nigel Farage has repeatedly stayed at a property Post-Georgia rents near Buckingham Palace. And Post-Georgia has funded everything from Farage's staff to his security to his drivers. Potomatory rules state that MPs must declare benefits received in the 12 months before their election. Almost all of Post-Georgia's support was of it. While making this podcast series, we approach both George Kotl and Nigel Farage. George Kotl says his support of Mr Farage is a result of friendship and shared political ideology, not any hope or expectation of receiving anything in return. Nigel Farage described Mr Kotl as a longstanding friend, both deny any wrongdoing. You've been listening to Post-Georg, the criminal behind Farage. With me, Gabriel Pogrand, alongside Venetia Mingus and Manin Medelo. The series is produced and exact by Will Rowan-Kate-Lambel. The assistant producer is Collette Fountain, sound designed by Tiffany Dimack, themed title and original music by Adam Forren. And the head of podcasts at the Times is Dan Box. [Music]