Media Storm - Foreign interference: Who bankrolled Brexit and Britain’s far-right?

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

Care about independent and ethical news? Support Media Storm on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! In today���s Media Storm, we dive into the shadow world of dark money and foreign interference seeking to take democracy out of our hands. Whether through think-tanks, bot farms, or all-expenses-paid MP trips, malicious actors have plenty of ways to influence our politics from outside. In theory, our politicians are supposed to work for us. They’re also supposed to disclose where their money is coming from (and make sure none of it is dirty or sanctioned). But a new report from Open Britain reveals a system with loopholes built into it, and a stark refusal to patch them up by those who stand to profit. Why are US billionaires bankrolling Britain’s far-right? Why do high-ranking intelligence officers describe Brexit as Moscow’s most successful “active measures” operation in modern British history? And WHY – in light of that – has no government ever comprehensively investigated foreign interference in the 2016 referendum? This episode features Conservative Party fundraiser-turned-whistleblower, Sergei Cristo, who shares his experiences of Russian state attempts to buy British politics. But Russia is not the only culprit. Journalist and broadcaster Sangita Myska joins us to break down her investigations into US and Israeli wealth that is reshaping our political landscape. We also revisit our interview with investigative journalist Sian Norris, about the illiberal causes where moneyed interests of Russia, the US and European aristocrats converge. Dark money is a vast problem in the UK today, and it stems from a culture of financial corruption that is deeply embedded in the City of London. Private schools, football clubs, estate agents and news corporations regularly sell their services to launder dark money. And at the centre of the ‘London laundromat’ are the Houses of Parliament. This episode should open your eyes to the dollar-shaped crack in democracy as it exists today. To learn more, visit open-britain.co.uk, where the full report will be published. This episode is brought to you in partnership with Open Britain, a grassroots campaign making democracy work for everyone (not just the rich and powerful)! This episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mathildamall⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) and Helena Wadia (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@helenawadia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠)  The music is by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @soundofsamfire⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us @mediastormpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Behind every F-35 jet is a Canadian company, horizontal tails built in Winnipeg, engine sensors from Ottawa, and stealth composite panels crafted in Loonenburg to name just a few. Thanks to thousands of skilled Canadian workers, the F-35 aircraft is delivering unmatched capabilities for 20 allied nations around the world, and will generate more than $15.5 billion in industrial value for Canada. This ad is sponsored by the F-35 partner team, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, and RTX. Learn more at www.f35.com slash Canada. This episode is brought to you in partnership with Open Britain, a grassroots campaign group making democracy work for everyone, not just the rich and powerful. Media Stormers, welcome back to a brand new season.

Oh my God, it's so good to be back. Hello. Hello. Obviously, I'm already ill. Start the season as you need to go on. We were literally opened our laptops to record today and then my laptop shut itself to do an update. And I was like, this is not a good omen. That was mean. meme and also hilarious. Anyway, if you guys are not on our Instagram or our patron, what are you doing? But also, you may not have seen that we have a very exciting new funding partnership to announce. This is with Open Britain. Now, Open Britain is a grassroots campaign group that fights to make democracy work for everyone. And they have five key missions. And one of those missions is eradicating disinformation in politics, in the media, in society in general,

and Media Storm perfectly fits that bill. So it's the same old Media Storm, we're bringing you weekly episodes, but there are some fresh new topics for us to consider. Like today. I've seen absolutely no evidence of successful Russian interference in any of any electoral, any electoral event, Mr. Speaker. Today we enter the show. shadow world of dark money and foreign interference seeking to take our democracy out of our hands. Interference is kind of a mild term. It implies soft power. It's not. Those behind it

own many of our politicians. They also own much of our media. We've actually talked about foreign money funding UK politics once before on Media Storm. It was when we were trying to understand the sudden return of anti-abortionism to UK political debate. It has steadily ticked up since Roe v. Wade was overturned in the States in 2022. Every year, over 200,000 abortions happen in the UK. That's one every three minutes. I believe it's time we criminalise this practice. One unexpected voice was Nigel Farage,

a famous libertarian who had never previously spoken out against abortion in his 31-year political career, until suddenly last May, he declared UK abortion rights, utterly ludicrous. I am pro-choice, but I think it's ludicrous. Utilessly ludicrous. Our guest on that episode traced the money. She's an investigative journalist at Open Democracy

and the author of Bodies Under Siege, Sean Norris. She discovered these anti-liberal forces gaining momentum in very different countries are in fact often very closely connected. In fact, you can often trace them back to a very small handful of super-rich individuals and organisations, they fund attacks on women's freedom, racial minorities and democracy. You've got three main funding sources. The first is money from Europe. The kind of

big spenders in Europe are often very oddly linked to big aristocratic foundations who push anti-abortion, anti-LGB causes and fund them. For example, the Habsburg family, a big anti-gender funder. There's some German aristocratic families that push money into this. Not of them have links to fascist and far-right regimes of the 20th century. For example, Beatrix von Stork is deputy leader of the German far-right AFD party. Her maternal grandfather was the finance minister in the Nazi regime. Her cousin, Duke Paul of Oldenburg, is the EU representative for a group called the Tradition Family and Property Organization, which stand against gay marriage and abortion,

and it also aims to restore the aristocracy across Europe. The second big part of money, unsurprisingly, is from the US. A lot of the money we see comes from religious freedom charities as they like to bill themselves. So Alliance Defending Freedom is one of the big legal charities in the states really fundamental in overturning Ray V Wade in 2020. And they're increasing their spending in the UK. And this is something that really should be a massive wake-up call to many of us and a real concern. But ADF has increased its spending in the UK to over a million dollars in the last year. when it was in the low 100,000s when they first set up their office.

This may help explain Nigel Farage's sudden decision that he's now anti-abortion. You see, he's become pretty cosy to the ADF, which has brokered meetings for him with senior US political figures and reportedly orchestrated his high-profile appearance before the US House Judiciary Committee. And then the third pot of money, again, unsurprisingly, is from Russia. And this is the money that's the most difficult to track because a lot of it is very, very dark.

But one of the big funders of anti-abortion, anti-LGB activity from Russia is a guy called Konstantin Malofiev, who is close to Putin. He actually recently married Maria Lavova Bolova, who is the architect of the child abduction scheme in Ukraine, you know, the war crimes of stealing Ukrainian children and indoctrinating them in Russia. And he has this foundation called the St. Basil, the Great Foundation, which has poured a lot of money into anti-abortion and anti-LGB causes. So those are the kind of big pots of money. That is a lot of information, but you identify three key origins for the funding of these global

anti-abortion campaigns that are all very different. You know, one, you said these European aristocratic families, two, these American evangelical Christian charities. And three, Russia, Russia destabilizing propagandists. These are all three entirely different. interest groups on the surface. So why is it that they all have this shared interest in undermining abortion rights? That's a really interesting question. Well, if you look at the Russia question, they're really interested in trying to create a vision across Europe. And so they used LGBT rights and abortion rights as a kind of fissure. With the US, they want to like make the world in their image. They want a Christian Europe in a Christian world. And I think with a European

aspect, we see these very traditional old school historic families who once, you know, ran Europe, wanting to reverse progress, reverse modernity. And ultimately, that is what unites all of these interest groups. Far right policymaking is focused on restoring this idea of a natural order. And it's this notion that at one point, the world was run by nature. And that nature was brutal and it was violent and men were men and they were in charge. Women were subordinate to men and their role was reproductive and they had to kind of produce the babies to like fuel the violent world. Black people were inferior to white people and LGBT people didn't exist. And all of these sort of drives against LGBT rights, abortion rights, immigration rights is about recreating this natural order,

reversing modernity, taking us back to a pre-enlightenment, pre-progressive, pre-rational moment where everything is ruled by nature. and nature is a hierarchy and white men are on the top of that hierarchy. The picture I have come to is that it's really those with the money in this equation who have the scary ideological visions, Sean describes. But in order to achieve their visions, they rely on politicians who are willing to sell their own political principles for money. So we end up with politicians who stop working for us, their electorates,

and start working for the highest bidder. Also, what that means is that these often very extremist ideas that we increasingly call populist, they're actually not populist at all, in that they do not really originate from the people, the grassroots. They are orchestrated, top down, by internationally coordinated, moneyed movements. These movements may be very good at harnessing people power, but they do so using very undemocratic power, dark money. So the reason we're covering this topic in detail today is because our new partners, Open Britain, have put together a detailed report about foreign interference in UK democracy.

It'll be published in the coming days and you can subscribe for free on OpenBriton's website, open-hifriton.Briton.com to be immediately notified of its release. As the report reveals, dark money is a vast problem in the UK today and it stems from a culture of financial corruption that is deep, embedded in the city of London. To understand this, we need to do a little bit of storytelling, helped in this section by Patrick Radin Keefe's new book, London Falling, which is one of a few fantastic pieces of reporting we rely on for this episode. We'll plug them in full at the end. Welcome to Larry King Live. Tonight, live after Gorbachev. Will the U.S. miss the old reliable rivalry? Good evening from Washington and Merry Christmas.

Glovichoff signed himself and the Soviet Union out of business. The Russian flag has replaced the hammer and sickle over the Kremlin. 1991, the dissolution of the USSR. This sparked one of the most dramatic wealth transfers in the history of the world. Whole sectors of formerly state-owned industry were rapidly privatized in a chaotic and highly corrupt grab for power. Opportunistic young capitalists accumulated vast fortunes, practically overnight by repossessing assets that had previously belonged,

at least in theory, to the whole Soviet Republic. This was daylight robbery by free market bandits who would become known as the oligarchs. One such man is Roman Abramovich, an orphan who overtook a state oil company in 1995 in a rigged auction. Like many oligarchs to enjoy his wealth unperturbed, he became deferential to Russia's incoming leader Vladimir Putin. an ex-KGB agent who was elected president in the year 2000. Unlike many oligarchs, Abramovich sought to protect his newfangled wealth seized in a state of lawlessness by moving it to a law and order country

that was known for protecting private property. The UK. Abramovich laundered his stolen money by buying up England's Chelsea Football Club for 140 million pounds in 2003. When Russia invaded Ukraine and sanctions forced Abramovich to sell his share of the club, Chelsea fans made their priorities clear by interrupting a matched tribute to the people of Ukraine with chance of the oligarchs' name. You see, in the 90s and 90s, this influx of Russian wealth was welcomed by the highest levels

of government as a lucrative opportunity. So much so that in 2008, the UK introduced a. a new visa program, commonly known as the Golden Visa, to fast-track residency for foreign nationals who invested at least £2 million in the UK economy. A quarter of those who applied were Russian. But then in February 2022, it started early this morning. The Russian assault on Ukraine began with missile attacks on key targets. The Golden Visa scheme was instantly scrapped. Britain decided, It was wrong to launder Putin's crony's money, especially when it posed a threat to our national security.

But not long ago, it was something the mayor of London was really quite proud of. That mayor was Boris Johnson. We have now in London, 72 billionaires, which is more than New York. New York has only 43 billionaires. And Paris has only 18 billionaires. And Moscow has, I think, 40. So, you know, London is to the billionaire as the jungles of Sumatra are to the orangutan. Congratulations on that.

We're proud of that. I mean, we're quite proud of it. I mean, let's be clear. We have mixed feelings. I'm sure you like your poor people too, though. Exactly right. And the argument that we make is that the presence of these exotic creatures, the billionaires, is good for the whole ecosystem. And they support by their billionaire activities, you know, asking people to bring the car around to the front of the hotel or whatever they do. And, you know, going to mind. That's all, that adds the economic activity in the city, as I'm sure you, you understand. There was a real marriage of convenience between incoming Russian oligarchs and local British aristocrats. The new Russian wealth class needed the legitimacy of old British families,

while the decrepit aristocracy needed the liquid cash of flashy Russians. So a number of oligarchs started sending their children to prestigious British public schools. One such pupil was a boy named Evgeny Lebedev. His father, Alexander Lebedev, was an ex-KGB colonel who bought a bank in 1995 and went on to make billions. In Radenkeef's book, a fellow student recalls how Evgenyenne. Lebedev, never, and I do mean never wore the school uniform which everyone else had to wear. Instead, he apparently wore expensive suits and ties to school, and curiously, none of the

teachers ever said anything. His classmate at Mill Hill School remembers finding this a little bit odd. Why tell you all this? Well, did you just confirm, and I just appreciate a yes or a no, that you met with the former KGB officer, Alexandra Lebedev, when you were Foreign Secretary? I'd have to change. Evgeny Lebedev would become one of Boris Johnson's greatest political allies. After, of course, he became owner of the London Evening Standard and the independent newspapers, two mainstream British outlets he still owns today. And where you and I met and began this journey.

This is where Media Storm truly all began. Some of you may remember, in 2017, Russia-Uk-K relations were thrown into crowsy. by the poisoning of Sergei Scrippel, a former Russian spy who became a double agent. This is a mysterious and even frightening case this morning. The government has concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible for the act against Sergei and Yulia Scripard. Days later, Boris Johnson, by this time now Foreign Secretary, was partying with Evgeny and his ex-KGB father at a Lebedev Villa in Italy.

The next day, he attended a boozy lunch with the pair, having been pictured carrying dossiers under his arm without his security detail present. Two years later, Boris Johnson was elected Prime Minister of the UK on a single-minded mantra to get Brexit done. Thank you all, thank you all very much for coming. Evgeny Lebedev threw his victory party. And in return for his shows of loyalty, Boris Johnson made Mr. Lebedev a life peer in the House of Lords.

and affirm that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. Lord Evgeny will now sit in our Parliament for the rest of his life, making the laws that we live by. News outlets, private schools, football clubs, estate agents, all have sold their services to launder dark money. Central London mansions sit as vacant foreign investments, and that's how our hometown became known as the London laundromat. It's also why none of us can afford to buy bloody houses here. Yay! Russia will be a big theme in this episode, but it's not the only culprit. Looking across the political spectrum today, our guests will expose dark money flowing into Westminster from the US and Israel as well.

And here I think it's worth pointing out something that Russia, the US and Israel have in common. Helena, can you guess it? Is it that each is currently the aggressor in an almost certain, Certainly illegal war. Yeah. In fact, all those wars have been peppered with pretty genocidal language. True. Basically, these countries' leaders are governing them as rogue states,

states that are dangerous, unpredictable, and in violation of international law. They show little regard for a rules-based world order and the sovereignty of other peoples. And that disregard manifests in another way, interfering in foreign democracies. And in some cases, they appear to have. pretty successfully exerted massive influence over major political decisions in Britain's recent history. Decisions we were led to believe were democratic, made by the people for the people. You couldn't possibly mean, for example, Brexit. Shh, we never talk about Brexit here in Britain.

Let's find out. We will be taking back control of our money, our borders and our laws. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Calyptocracy Tour of London. We're going to see the sites of corruption. Former UK leader Nigel Farage is facing an investigation by the Commons flees watchdog over a five million pound gift from Thailand-based cryptocurrency investor. Welcome to MediaStorm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last.

I'm Matilda Malinson. And I'm Helena Wadia. This week's Media Storm, Dark Money and Foreign Interference. Who owns our politicians? Welcome to the Media Storm studio. In our introduction, we talked about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the the wealth grab by the oligarchs. Our first guest left Russia at around this time because he understood then and there that his country had not been liberated and it may not be in his lifetime.

So he emigrated here to the UK where he has worked as a BBC journalist, asset management specialist and Conservative Party fundraiser turned whistleblower against the Russian interference in British politics. We are really excited to hear his perspective today. Welcome to Media Storm, Sergei Christo. Thank you very much for having me. Our second guest is a multi-award-winning presenter and journalist. She has taken on foreign interference in our media at monumental, personal and professional risk.

She has also investigated and exposed dark money flowing from abroad towards the rising British far right. She has a very busy day today, so we are extremely grateful that she's given us her time. This morning, welcome to Media Storm, Sangita Maiska. Great to be here. Let's begin. So, Sergey, could you tell us,

what originally drew you to the UK Conservative Party? Well, I arrived in the UK, immigrated to 93. So it was before oligarchs actually took control of Yeltsin's Russia in the 90s. I worked in the BBC in the World Service throughout the 90s covering politics and economics. At the BBC, we were supposed to be politically neutral. I knew that if not Margaret Thatcher and Reagan in 1980s, I probably would. would be still living in the grey socialist paradise. So Margaret Sacha was my hero for a very long time.

And when I decided at the end of my work with the BBC to leave journalism, tried to earn a bit more money, I became more interested in politics. And the Conservative Party was a natural place to go. So you got approached by this Russian diplomat, Sergei Nalobbin, and he wanted to talk to you about your involvement with the Conservative Party, but some things in that meeting alarmed you. What was it? Yes.

So in the 90s, as a journalist, I used to go to the Russian embassy, and it was a very different time. It was before Putin, you know, came to power, and Russia was trying to make friends in the UK. After Putin, the whole strategy changed. The Russians wanted to buy friends in the UK, not make them. So when I suddenly received this call out of the blue in late, 2010 from a senior Russian diplomat called Sergei Nalovian asking to talk about politics and the

Conservative Party. I didn't really want to meet him. He persevered. And what happened was that in our second telephone conversations, when I tried to explain that, you know, I'm not really doing much at the moment with the Conservatives, he then dropped a bombshell. He said, oh, well, you know, you're still doing some things for the Treasurer's Department with the Conservative headquarters, which is the department raising funds for the party. We can help with that. I know Russian companies that would like to contribute to the Conservatives. So I thought, okay, well, I need to go and find out what he's up to.

Clearly, he wasn't just a diplomat, but also he was really pushing a new kind of relationship. Can I just pinpoint something that Nalobin asked you, which is that there were... Russian companies, he said that were interested to contribute to the Conservative Party. I understand that that caught your attention because what he was suggesting was and is illegal. It's a criminal offence. You can go to prison for that. Right. And yet the fact that he asked it shows Moscow apparently seemed to think there was a way. And this is where the Open Britain report comes in. Open Britain, working with you, Sergei, has laid out lots of legal loopholes used to sneak money in to politics as well as illegal channels.

There's shell companies, think tanks, all party parliamentary groups, friends of groups. Sergei, if you had to summarize, just what is the state of our system? And how good is it at preventing foreign, dark money coming into Westminster? Now, we know that the Russian money influenced British politics for a very long time. The Russian money have been flowing not just into the political parties, but they were supporting various other channels to develop political narratives such as think tanks. There were also money channeled to writing bloggers, for example. The British authorities allowed British politicians to be funded through Russia Today channel,

the model which is now used to channel money through GB News. And there are now, obviously, new channels appearing. One group you fought to take down, Sergey, was the Conservative Friends of Russia. There are many other friends of groups. Around 80% of Tory MPs are members of Conservative Friends of Israel, so the group claims. It does not disclose its sources of funding, much like Labour Friends of Israel, but each has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on all expenses paid trips for British MPs to Israel, including during the war on Gaza. A 2024 report by Declassified UK found a quarter of UK MPs

in the last Parliament had accepted funding from pro-Israel lobbies. The total value of these donations was over a million pounds. Sangita, let's bring you in here. You've looked into how Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, which is labelled as fostering the connection between Jewish communities and the state of Israel, is actually directly propping up far-right figures in the UK and Europe. Tell us what you have discovered. So, Helena, that's exactly right.

And I've been looking specifically at the person that is the UK's most influential far-right activist, a man called Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. He's had an incredible journey of the last 25 years, essentially from football hoodigan, now becoming somebody who earned millions of pounds a year, grifting off division in the UK. The drum that he beats is around two things. One, he's primarily anti-immigration. And also a believer that Islam and the Muslim community in this country is going out of its way in an organized fashion to bring down Western civilization. He's an interesting character because for quite some time he was trying to get the interest of the Israeli authorities piqued and was relatively unsuccessful. What we then see is

the Netanyahu coalition government and of course that's gone into coalition with far right Israeli political parties who are ethno-nationalists in the same way that Tommy Robinson is. And all of this culminates in Tommy Robinson eventually getting an official invitation to go to visit the state of Israel. It's very difficult to underestimate how important this is. Now, that invitation was issued by a guy called Amici Chikli, who is the Minister for Diaspora. and what the two men have in common is this view that Muslims pose a direct threat to their cultures. You've got to ask yourself, what would a state get out of having a relationship with somebody who is a far-right influencer? It's very clear what Tommy Robinson is getting out of it.

What he's getting out of it is essentially a state sanction. It confers upon him a degree of legitimacy. It's not quite clear what Amici Chikli and the state of Israel is getting out of it. And the reason I say this is because the British Board of Deputies, which is a conservative Jewish organization in this country, implored Chikli to rescind that invitation. But he didn't. In fact, the board described Tommy Robinson as a thug.

What we see is the state conferring, as I say, on this man, a degree of legitimacy that makes him an acceptable political voice in Israel. And that's something we should all be very worried about. With individuals like Tommy Robinson who aren't actually political parties, it's also much easier to channel sort of dark money through because they don't have to disclose where their funds come from like with parties. But there are lots of ways to sort of launder money that is coming in to official political parties as well. A loophole, for example, is individuals, right?

individual donors prop up most of our politicians. Between 2001 and 2021, 20% of UK political donations came from just 10 men, men, by the way, with an average age of 70. So these people can receive money from any illegitimate source, and then they donate it legitimately to parties and individuals themselves. One example in the Open Britain report is the art dealer Ehud Shalegh, who donated £630,000 to the conservatives, money that was later revealed to have come directly from a former official in the old pro-Putin regime of Ukraine. Another example is Lubov-Chernikin, who was given over two million pounds to the Conservatives. She's married to Russia's former deputy finance minister and was allowed to give 50K to the Tories days after the invasion of Ukraine, despite making

lots of her money from oligarchs who were sanctioned by the Tory government. If we're looking at individual donors, Sangita, again on Tommy Robinson, you've very looked into conservative US billionaires, bankrolling Tommy Robinson and the British far right. To what extent has their money enabled him to rebrand himself from the convicted criminal, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, to this populist hero he is today? Around 2016, he starts a meeting and buddying up with millionaires and billionaires in the United States. These are all conservative, pro-Israel business people who are incredible. influential in US politics. First off, there's Robert Schillman. He confers upon Robinson

something called the Schillman Fellowship, and that gives Robinson a steady £5,000 a month income and gets him over into the United States. Schillman is also the person we think that introduced Robinson to Rebel News. This is a Canadian outfit, which is not a news station, regardless of the name. It's very much a right-wing bandwagon. If you ever watch videos Tommy, you'll see somebody with the Rebel News might, following around saying, yes, Tommy, isn't he persecuted? Isn't it all terrible? Robinson then has this fellowship, he has an income, and now he has a digital platform. He then goes on and meets a guy called David Horowitz. Now, David Horowitz was one of the leading conservative voices in the US, and Horowitz's foundation,

starts writing, very sympathetic articles about Tommy Robinson. You have Robinson's ideas being promoted across America. And then finally, there's something called the Middle East Foundation. This is a very interesting influential space. Again, they talk about trying to maintain Western values. What they tend to do is use these very broad phrases like anti-jihad, anti-Islam, failing to properly distinguish between terrorism and all Muslim culture, which, as we know, is incredibly diverse.

And what we know, because they've confirmed it, is that they gave Robinson around £60,000 to host a rally in 2019. And this is the first time we see Robinson morph from just being a kind of street thug into somebody who can rally really large crowds to central London. I should say, Robinson has always claimed that he has not been directly funded by the state of Israel, I will also say that the three millionaires and billionaires I've just named have also made it very clear that they want to promote the interests of that state. The thing about the word interference is that it sounds like soft power, but it's often far from that. And I think we need to look at just how forcefully it may have altered our political reality today.

Sergei, let's head back to your meeting with the Russian diplomat Nalobin. he also took interest in rumours of a rift between Boris Johnson and David Cameron, wanting to know if this was real or just gossip. For listeners who don't know, it was real. The Johnson Cameron rivalry began at Eton, continued through Oxford University, where both men were members of the Bullingdon Club, the All-Male Drinking Society, and culminated in the Conservative Party when they led opposing sides of the Brexit referendum. Between Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage's UK Independence Party, there has been plenty of suspicion about foreign interference swaying the Brexit referendum. Sergei, what can we say with certainty about if and how the Kremlin influenced Brexit? The premise that Russia has not had a material impact in a referendum,

which was won by two percentage points. It's little nonsense from the mathematical point of view, because the Russians took a very long time to get this aside, to be as divided as it was at the time. They were working on the sort of very divisive narratives for a very long time to try to marginalize British politics. When you have society divided 50-50, it's the easiest situation for foreign interference.

It's a situation where foreign interference would have maximum effect. The main geopolitical objective of Putin then and now is to divide and weaken the resolve of the West. Deterrence only is possible when threats are probably exposed and investigated. Russian interference has not been exposed. People who took money and were corrupted have not been named. And if you don't investigate a name, deterrence collapses because people know that they will never be punished for it. And that's the main worry. So that's why I think this country needs a proper public inquiry into the Russian interference. So we understand why the system

failed, what institutional failure has led to it. So that institutions like the Electoral Commission and the security service, the police can be realigned now in an effective way. You talk about deterrence, Sergei. This is a really interesting point because the question then is, what has the UK done to deter foreign interference, essentially by holding previous incidents to account? Now, after Brexit, there was an investigation by the Intelligence and Security Committee into Russian interference.

But in 2019, the chair of this committee, Dominic Greve, revealed that the Conservative government, specifically Boris Johnson, was blocking him from publishing the Russia report ahead of the general election. That report was successfully suppressed and Boris Johnson won the election. It was finally published in July 2020, but half of it remains classified today. And this report also actively avoided looking directly at Brexit. So Open Britain responds to this in its report. It says for almost a decade, successive British governments have insisted that there is no evidence any UK election or referendum was affected by foreign interference. They have been able to make that claim only because no government has ever commissioned

the investigation that could find such evidence. Now, the next person we want to talk about on this topic is Nigel Farage, as he forms a bit of a bridge between Sergei's story of Russian dark money and Sangitas of US billionaires. People may not know this, but Nigel Farage. Raj used to be a regular on the Kremlin-funded news show Russia Today or RT. At this point, around 2010, he was a fairly fringe figure and internationally pretty unknown, but he used his slot on RT very well. He'd have them broadcast his visits to Brussels, where he'd ask the one question he was entitled to as a member of the European Parliament. His question would have nothing to do with that week's

debate, it would purely be designed to generate anti-EU clickbait, and it really worked. RT actually claims that Farage has been known far longer to the RT audience than most of the British electorate. What people may remember is that when Russia invaded Ukraine, Farage argued the EU had provoked Russia into doing so by forcing Ukraine to choose between itself and Russia. Now, as well as Russian state TV, Farage has been backed by a range of overseas, multi-millionaires. Among them, US tech billionaire Elon Musk, who he once met with at Mara Lago, amid rumours Musk might donate a whopping $100 million to reform. This fell apart when Musk dissed him for Tommy Robinson. Sangheeta, talk to us about Elon Musk's involvement in UK politics. How would

you characterize it? A word's fascinating, I think, is probably how I'd characterize it in one word. three years ago, Elon Musk buys X, then Twitter, and decides to turn it into a money-making enterprise. He decides, right, I'm going to go for this strategy of unbanning all of the toxic accounts on Twitter that had been banned for a very good reason, usually for extremist views. And amongst one of the bans that was lifted was that that had been placed on Tommy Robinson. Why is that important? Because we know that Tommy Robinson, makes a significant amount of money through his digital platforms. Not only that, it's a way in which he can connect with other people

who share his far-right views at lightning speed. And so when you have a billionaire who is using his platform to elevate extremist ideas, Tommy Robinson is able to do numerous things. Hope not hate, an organisation that has tracked the far-right for many years now in the UK, put Tommy Robinson's wealth in the millions, and the vast amount of that income is coming from him exploiting his digital platforms.

And that's why all of this stuff is very important and why it might be difficult to quantify the exact dollar terms how much Elon Musk is benefiting Tommy Robinson. What we can say is that influence is significant, it's meaningful, and it's having an impact on the national discourse. and I would argue on the stability of democracy here in the UK. Sergei has had to rush off, but for part two, we're looking at foreign interference in our media, and Sangita will be here to take us through it. Let's take a quick break.

Welcome back. Next up, we'll look at foreign interference in our legacy news media. Information warfare is real, and it can get personal. In the past week, we've seen Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened the harshest possible legal action against the New York Times and its journalist Nicholas Christoph for publishing Palestinian testimonies of rape by Israeli soldiers. Journalists like Carol Cadwalader have faced highly personal attacks by Russian disinformation factories, almost certainly, for her work reporting on Russian interference. Sangita, you've also been subjected to similar campaigns.

What do you think of the level of protection in place for journalists who, dare to speak up about corrupt influence. Are they given any or enough support? I actually have, as a result of my own personal experiences, being forced down the route of trying to figure out what protections journalists actually have. The reality is, and I don't want to put off young journalists from entering the industry,

but the reality is journalists in the UK have very few protections. The protections they have come from the organisations for which they work. So in other words, if you are unfairly criticized, it's up to your line managers, the owners of the organization, the people that run it, other journalists, to step up on your behalf and publicly speak on your behalf, which is exactly what's happened to the New York Times. But in law, there is essentially nothing that protects a journalist from a smear campaign, apart from trying to take out very, very expensive libel or defamation actions against those people that are trying to. trying to smear you. What I would say is that we do need to have better, probably legal protections and whistleblown protections for journalists because they simply don't exist. There's another issue around NDAs. It's now in the public domain that when I signed my last contract with one of my previous employers, LBC where I had a radio show, entrenched within that contract

was a confidentiality agreement that lasts in perpetuity, very similar to an MDA. And on top of that a non-disparagement clause. So if I was ever to discuss publicly or even privately, for that matter, things that I was unhappy with in terms of ethical conduct, I can't do that ever without risking being sued by a multi-million pound company. And I'm not alone in that. We've seen that happen all around the world. Specifically, Sanghita, you have been a fierce critic of Israeli influence over our media and particularly our media's coverage of the war on Gaza. What have your experiences been? My entire career has been in mainstream media. I was trained by the BBC. I worked there for over 20 years. I worked at LBC. These are mainstream media

outlets. I am a mainstream media journalist who's now working in the independent sector. The last two years should be a wake-up call for every single journalist in this country. We should be interrogating ourselves as to how our industry has reported what I think are crimes against humanity conducted against the Palestinian people. There was a very good report done by the Centre for Media Monitoring in which it is absolutely abundantly clear that broadly speaking, what we have seen is a dehumanisation of Palestinian victims and a series of excuses being made for the state of Israel and what I believe to be is genocidal conduct, but it's not just me, is it? It's all of the leading genocide scholars in the world, plus all of the leading human rights

organizations in the world, plus the ICJ, who ruled that there is, in fact, a plausible case for genocide in the January of 2024. If you're a journalist who is prepared to say the things that I have just said, none of which are anti-Semitic, all of which rooted in fact, you will become victim of a personal and professional smear campaign, the likes of which you have never seen. That will happen online. It will happen in the form of a whispering campaign. And ultimately, it's designed to ensure that you are driven out of the industry because you're unable to make an income. What I think we're moving to is an incredibly dangerous time in our democracy. In part because of what you've been talking about in this podcast, which is desperately needed this conversation,

the risks of foreign influence on our politics. And on top of that, the rise of the far right, and the way in which it is coalescing around ethno nationalism around the world and how divisive that is. Absolutely. San Gita, you've been incredible. Thank you so much for all of your time today. Quickly before we lose you, do you have anything that you would like to plug to our listeners or any calls to action for them? If you'd like to find out more about Tommy Robinson and his connections to pro-Israel conservatives

and the funding and the influence that they have, as well as Elon Musk, you can find those two films on the Middle East Eye. YouTube channel. Also, Nigel Farage and his crypto links. I've investigated that for The Nerve News. So you can go to my Instagram or my ex account at Sangeeta Miska and you can find those things there. And I suppose my call to arms would be we as journalists need to, it's a competitive field. We know that. I think journalism is probably one of the most competitive fields in the world. But there are areas in which we all need to start working together better and more cohesively. and a lot of that is around protecting each other.

I do think the Media Storm podcast, I think the work you are doing is really important. Thank you very much indeed for inviting me on. Now, as we mentioned at the start of this episode, Media Storm's new partner, Open Britain, is publishing a report on the subject of foreign interference. And it makes a number of recommendations about how we solve this sticky issue.

These include the declassification of the ISC Russia report, the one that Boris Johnson fought pretty hard to keep hidden, if you remember. It also includes a series of institutional reforms to block dark money entering politics via those loopholes we talked about like think tanks and shell companies and friends of groups. It says that these reforms could actually be included

in the representation of the People Bill currently going through Parliament if we all get our act together and start petitioning. And finally, the report calls for a full public inquiry into Russian interference in British politics, specifically into Brexit. Why? Because, as Open Britain says, refusing to reconstruct what was arguably the most successful Russian active measures operation in British history is like trying to recommend new pandemic rules without being allowed to look at COVID-19.

The report concludes the choice before government is not whether to investigate, but whether to do so on its own terms. now or on a successor government's terms later. We respectfully urge the former. We'll share that report when it comes out, but you can subscribe to OpenBriton's newsletter directly or head to their website, open-hyphenbritten.co.com.uk. And just finally, before we wrap, there are a few pieces of incredible reporting that heavily informed the research in this episode, which you can go directly to if you'd like to learn more about the story. For one, Sergei's story is told in detail by Carol Cadwallader and Peter Jukes in the podcast series Sergei and the Westminster spiring.

Patrick Rannankeith's latest book, London Falling, is a fantastic narrative investigation into the suspicious death of a 19-year-old boy who got caught up in London's mafia circles. And most of all, this topic shows how essential independent news is. Much of the heavy lifting has been done by outlets like Open Democracy, Declassies, Unacified UK and Byline Times. So as ever, we direct you to support our work at MediaStorm on Patreon if you can. Thank you for listening. This episode was brought to you in partnership with Open Britain,

a grassroots campaign group making democracy work for everyone, not just for the rich and powerful. Next week, we're going to look at why there are so many angry young women. Also, the media likes to call them. We'll be joined by Megan Cooper, host of the Higher Love Podcast, and Eliza Hatch from Cheer Up, Love. If you want to support Media Storm, you can do so on Patreon for less than a cup of coffee a month.

The link is in the show notes and a special shout-out to everyone in our Patreon community already. We appreciate you so much. Media Storm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helena Wadier and Matilda Malinson. The music is by Samfire.