How WhatsApp messages revealed ex-Reform politician's pro-Russian bribes

WhatsApp messages have revealed how a prominent MEP for Nigel Farage's Brexit Party took bribes as part of a pro-Russian influence campaign in the European Parliament.

Nathan Gill, who went on to become leader of Reform UK in Wales, has been jailed after admitting taking money from an alleged "pawn" of the main security agency in Vladimir Putin's Russia.

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 52-year-old father-of-seven had pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery and was sentenced to 10 and a half years at the Old Bailey on Friday.

Prosecutors found WhatsApp chats between Gill and a Ukrainian called Oleg Voloshyn, a former member of the Ukraine Parliament for a pro-Russian party.

Gill, an MEP for six years, was also paid to host Putin's most trusted associate in Ukrainian politics at the parliament in Strasbourg.

Counter terror police, who stopped Gill before boarding a plane to Moscow in 2021, found a message on Gill's phone which said he would be "fairly rewarded" for organising the event.

Scotland Yard accused Gill of "peddling narratives… beneficial towards Russian interests". Gill pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery in September.

Farage, now leader of Reform UK, said he was "stunned" that Gill, a former Mormon bishop would have done this.

Farage said he had no knowledge of his "shameful activities" and condemned them "in every possible way".

Gill had visited Ukraine in May 2018 and was with Voloshyn at an event to commemorate the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.

That was four years after Putin's forces had annexed Crimea while Russia were also supporting separatists fighting in Ukraine's Donbas region.

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine happened in 2022.

That trip to Ukraine – the first of three in 2018 – was arranged by a Polish man called Janusz Niedźwiecki, who is awaiting trial in Poland on charges of spying for Russia.

While Gill, originally from Hull, deepened his connections in Ukraine, his ties to UKIP frayed and in December 2018 he followed Farage out of the party.

Prosecutors say he committed his first offence around this time - and that Voloshyn used the codewords "xmas gifts" and "post cards" to refer to cash in WhatsApps to Gill.

In return for the bribe, Gill read from a script in a European Parliament debate, where he raised concerns about threats in Ukraine to close two TV channels - 112 Ukraine and NewsOne.

Both were connected to Viktor Medvedchuk, a super-rich Ukrainian oligarch whose daughter has Putin as her godfather.

Gill had visited the TV channels with fellow MEPs David Coburn and Jonathan Arnott in October 2018, both of whom spoke up for the broadcasters in the same debate as Gill.

Coburn and Gill were on an "international editorial board" for 112, together with Voloshyn.

Some were payments for making supportive statements about Medvedchuk to 112.

On two occasions he was asked to get other MEPs, who have not been named by the prosecution, to do the same.

Voloshyn promised combined payments of at least €10,000 (about £8,600) for the favour.

Two of those present at Medvedchuk's Strasbourg meeting were Brexit Party MEPs Rupert Lowe and James Wells.

Lowe said Gill had asked "me and other MEPs to attend" an event with a "very pro-Russian slant".

"Due to his position in the grouping, I agreed," added Lowe, now an independent MP who had a public falling out with Farage.

Lowe said he had no idea of Gill's bribery, calling it "treasonous".

Wells said he was angry with Gill because he felt he had been "using people around him, like me I guess, to put bums on seats".

The former Welsh MEP said he "left probably after half an hour, because I didn't know why I was there" and added the event now sounds "dodgy as hell".

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