Nathan Gill, the former leader of Reform UK in Wales and ex-MEP, was sentenced on Friday at the Old Bailey to 10 and a half years after pleading guilty to bribery for taking money to make pro-Russian statements in the European Parliament.
Gill was paid thousands of pounds to give TV interviews in favour of a key Putin ally and to make speeches in the European Parliament between December 2018 and July 2019. The “ultimate source” of the funds was Viktor Medvedchuk, a pro-Kremlin politician, who Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb described as “a close friend of Vladimir Putin”.
There have been no other arrests or interviews under caution, but the Met’s counter terrorism commander Dominic Murphy said at a briefing last Thursday his team were investigating several former British MEPs.
According to the prosecution, Gill’s first offence was committed after a trip to Ukraine in October 2018 to visit pro-Russia TV channels 112 Ukraine and NewsOne. He was joined by fellow MEPs David Coburn and Jonathan Arnott. A few weeks later, all three men made strikingly similar statements to the European Parliament. with Gill reading from a script that had been agreed with intermediary Oleg Voloshyn, in return for “souvenirs”, “Xmas gifts” and “postcards”. For this count alone, Gill was sentenced to five years.
Coburn joined Gill on an advisory “international editorial board” for 112, with Voloshyn, and held “what purported to be an editorial board meeting” in Strasbourg in April 2019, according to the prosecution. A WhatsApp exchange that day shows Gill and Voloshyn discussing payments. “I’m seeing D in morning. How much was for him?” says Gill. Voloshyn responds: “6.5”, and adds a smiley face. After a back and forth about money, Voloshyn says: “And other 2 for David you have already with you.”
The prosecution said the messages suggest that as well as receiving payment himself, “concurrent payments were made to two other MEPs. An obvious inference is that most or all of these payments were made in respect of their participation in the international board of the two media organisations.”
With no arrests or charges brought these points remain allegations.
Other exchanges show Voloshyn asking Gill to “get” other MEPs, including Coburn and Arnott, to speak on certain topics, promising Gill would “get 5 for you if you get those comments on camera”. There is no suggestion that the other MEPs were paid in those instances.
But Gill’s conviction raises questions about the ease with which western democracies can be infiltrated and influenced by hostile states. The prosecution estimates that Gill received around £40,000 over the period in question.
Duncan Hames, director of policy at Transparency International, said: “That Gill is the first UK politician to be charged under the Bribery Act marks a significant moment in our understanding of foreign interference threats. This prosecution underscores the very real danger that hostile states and their proxies pose to our democratic processes, and the relatively small amounts of money it took to gain influence within our political system.”
Speaking ahead of the sentencing, Dominic Murphy, the head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, whose team led the investigation, said: “This is Nathan Gill reaching out to individuals that he knows, who are Brits, who might be willing to be paid to go and make speeches. I think this was literally Nathan Gill picking individuals that he sat and worked alongside in the European Parliament.”
Arnott said he wrote his own statements and denied ever receiving payments. Coburn did not respond to requests for comment.
Photograph by Ilyas Tayfun Salci/Anadolu via Getty Images