Nigel Farage keeps eclectic company. Reform is not a party of slick spin doctors or career politicians. Instead, it is staffed by people like George Cottrell, the minor aristocrat and former convict, who acts as Farage’s fixer. He is, according to Farage, ‘like a son to me’. I’m told that Cottrell is often seen in the Reform offices in Millbank helping the party, although he is still described by party staff as a simple ‘unpaid volunteer’. 

Cottrell, 31, has always had an air of dodginess about him. In 2016 he spent eight months in an American maximum security prison for wire fraud relating to an international money laundering conspiracy. He plans to publish a book called How to Launder Money early next year (the man has a sense of humour). Now, new court documents illuminate parts of Cottrell’s murky private life. It’s a complicated story, but it’s worth telling because Cottrell has been Reform’s in-house money man for a decade. There are times when he’s supposedly lent Farage money and is known to help out other members of staff in financial difficulties. His family have also donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party. 

In these court documents, first reported by the Guardian, Cottrell is accused of acting as a sock puppet for a professional gambling syndicate. It’s alleged that the owner of Brighton & Hove Albion, Tony Bloom, took control of Cottrell’s gambling accounts, winning upwards of $250 million. Cottrell is said to have been given a share of these winnings in return for the use of the accounts. 

The case has come about because a man called Ryan Dudfield, who had worked for Bloom in the past, says he’s owed a portion of those winnings. Dudfield specialised in ‘secret exotic accounts’, a system where professional gamblers place bets using other people’s names. Doing this allows gamblers to circumvent restrictions that bookmakers often place on professionals. Win too much money and the bookmakers shut you down. Use someone else’s and they have no way of knowing you’re the professional gambler they’ve banned. It isn’t illegal, but it is a........

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