The News You Need, Friday, July 31st, 2026
Farage's money laundering, Europe boycotts World Cup, Putin's reverence for Stalin, Fascist vengeance in the heartland, Trump considers $100,000 fee for international students
George Cottrell transferred $2m to his mother days before her donations to Reform UK
The Guardian
George Cottrell with Nigel Farage in 2019. Sources say the Reform UK leader’s aide deposited several tranches of hundreds of thousands of dollars into his mother Fiona’s account shortly before she donated to the party. Photo: Mark Kerrison/Alamy
Scott: Pavement-pounding investigations by The Guardian and The Times, the go-to newspapers for Labour and the Tories, respectively, are rapidly unraveling the tale of how Nigel Farage built and funded Reform UK. Crypto kingpins play a key role, and in the center is a convicted moneylaunderer for drug lords named George Cottrell, who effectively became Farage’s major domo, finding ready cash when he needed it and carefully laundering it through multiple accounts to avoid giving away the source. What we have learned so far: all the explanations that Farage offers for how he came by the money are quickly exposed as lies. And money laundering seems to figure as the essential modus operandi.
A tax investigator for HM Revenue & Customs would definitely look at these facts and look for further clues that this is all disguised remuneration for Farage and his chums. But for what services, exactly? That’s the bigger question.
The convicted fraudster George Cottrell transferred a total of more than $2m to his mother, Fiona Cottrell, in the days before her 2024 donations to Reform UK, the Guardian understands.
Financial industry sources told the Guardian that Fiona received one deposit of $1.4m and two tranches of more than $300,000 each – money she attributed to having come from her son, George, when bankers asked about the deposits.
On each occasion, the Guardian understands transfers were made 24-72 hours before Fiona made a donation either directly to Reform, or via Britain Means Business, a fundraising vehicle for the political party.
According to sources, the lump sums went through US-based cryptocurrency exchanges before entering Fiona’s account. These platforms allow crypto-assets to be changed for hard currency, such as US dollars or British pounds. Some were routed to Fiona via money exchange services.
The Metropolitan police are investigating the funding of Reform UK, with a focus on scrutinising whether there were attempts to disguise the ultimate source of donations.
The new disclosures will add to the questions facing Reform and its leader, Nigel Farage, whose finances have been under the spotlight since the Guardian revealed he received a £5m gift from the crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne.
Fascist Vengeance in the Heartland
The Guardian
Charles: Last week Stephen Miller addressed the representatives of 60 countries at the State Department. In a speech replete with fascist tropes, Miller said Antifa demonstrators are “all deformed in some way, in their appearance, in their dress, in their mannerisms.” Then he described the Trump administration’s strategy for targeting its opponents: “disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest and prosecute.”
The Guardian’s Sam Levin describes in granular detail how this strategy is playing out in real time in real life.
In yet another example of the Department of Justice being converted into the Department of Vengeance, Daniel Rosen, the Minnesota US attorney, said whether the Minneapolis protesters he had indicted caused physical harm was not the measure of criminality in this case.
Rosen said the prosecution “supported the mission of Donald Trump’s executive order last year that designated ‘antifa’ a “domestic terrorist organization” responsible for “riots” against ICE. “
In the case of 53-year old college professor Erik Davis, this meant he became one of 15 protesters indicted by a Federal grand jury because he was part of a “conspiracy” to “impede or injure” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. His “anti-authoritarian” ideology was apparently enough to get him indicted. He is not accused of any violent acts or of having any encounters with ICE agents.
Erik Davis, a professor at Macalester College in St Paul,
Sam Levin writes:
The prosecution follows a pattern seen in other cases against demonstrators this year, with the government highlighting the comments and actions of some activists in the coalition to paint all 15 defendants as agitators pursuing violence against ICE.
One such case in Chicago spectacularly collapsed last month. Demonstrators in Texas were recently convicted of terrorism charges and sentenced to decades behind bars, though in that case one protester shot and injured an officer. Prosecutors have not alleged any specific injuries to officers in Minnesota.
Civil rights advocates have said these prosecutions, even when unsuccessful, are part of an effort to criminalize lawful community organizing, weaken movements opposing deportations and turn the lives of activists upside down.
“It’s petty revenge,” Davis said. “They’re trying to portray being part of a community as an illegal conspiratorial act.”
Davis, and other defendants interviewed by the Guardian, are confident that the case against them will collapse. But the government is trying to send a signal, he said: “This isn’t just about us. It’s about trying to scare everybody who opposes ICE.”
He is facing six years in prison.
