Where did Fiona Cottrell get all that money?

[Kingdomofsleep]

I've been a bit fascinated by this latest news about Farage and all the money.

The latest detail is that Fiona Cottrell, the mother of Posh George the crypto fraudster guy, gave Reform donations of £1m and £500k over the past few years.

However! She is a retired stylist who lives in a cottage worth between 500k and 1m, and inherited just £1.5m from her husband when he died. So, comfortably off, but not with millions to spare.

I mean, my house is worth around that (mortgaged), and my dh would raise eyebrows if I donated so much as £500 to a political party. Let alone £1.5m!

She seemingly hasn't earnt it or inherited it. So it seems like someone has given it to her to give to Reform. That someone didn't want to give it to Reform in his own name. If this is true, it's fraud apparently. Who is it? This could be so big.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/police-investigate-reform-donations-by-mother-of-fraudster-who-bankrolled-farage-3kd826j7h

More from the Times

Its very easy to hoard wealth when you pay no tax

She's not wealthy though, that's the point. She's just got a fairly ordinary house and she's inherited a comfortable but still-on-the-ordinary-spectrum amount of money from her late dh. She's not much wealthier than your average middle class widow.

She's just suddenly magicked half a million pounds out of nowhere and then given it straight to Reform... multiple times.

This thread is not about being envious of her wealth, she isn't particularly wealthy! People are not understanding this. It's about Somebody secretly moving huge wodges of money around via these pawns, the Cottrells and Farage.

This is interesting- why only for two weeks? I've got more reading homework to do haha

Yes.
If my teenager suddenly had ten grand in his bank account and explained it was so that he could transfer it via his bank account to another person my first thought would not be "gosh my teenager is wealthy" it would be "oh shit what's going on". This is like that, but on a much bigger scale (and involving adults with fully developed prefrontal cortexes). If someone transfers a vast amount of money to someone else and it's impossible to understand where they got it from themselves that's a big red flag.

From Pogrund on x

Reform had its bank account frozen at height of general election after potentially illegal donations from George Cottrell's mother and Richard Tice We reveal Arbuthnot Latham, its bank, blocked payments for two weeks after suspect transaction

Farage and Tice have vocally campaigned against the "banking establishment". Yet neither man has ever discussed the fact the party's account were frozen by the day of the general election in 2024. This came after bankers referred £1m+ of suspect payments to the NCA.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/reform-uk-bank-account-frozen-george-cottrell-mother-3vr75zb9r

Wow this reminds me, remember when Farage had his Coutts account frozen and he complained it was because they didn't like his politics? I wonder if it was actually because they had evidence his money was well dodgy... I'll try and find out more

No I've just reread the story and I think that one was on Coutts, they admitted it was all because they didn't like his views, or something, so they were de-banking him for that. I remember I felt like I was on Farage's side at the time about that. I can't find anything different about it now, he settled for damages with Nat West the parent bank I think.

No they didn’t admit to it per se, an internal document was found saying that he was a xenophobic grifter, but the reason was never found out. It could well have been money laundering, because there are laws against debanking for political views so they wouldn’t have been allowed to do that.

They only need suspicions it is money laundering. Anyone in a financial supervisory role who suspects money laundering is committing a crime by not reporting it. But all that noise (distraction) from Farage got Coutts to apologise, if I remember rightly.

Yeah that makes sense... hopefully the Times Insight team will get to that. The Coutts story was a big story at the time so many people might remember it

The bank couldn't have told him he was being debanked because of suspected money laundering (if that was the reason) because tipping off is also a crime.

Yes there was an email that undid them Unfortunately as I suspect there was a lot more to it than they were able to disclose

this still works for the Times article

That was a good read - they actually mentioned the Coutts incident in this but not in more detail than we have here.

It seems that Reform were forced to return some of their donations within 30 days. Good grief. Also, the freezing of the bank account of a political party is unheard of in modern times, the article says. Reform is record-breakingly dodgy, basically.

It's kind of sad because so many ordinary people are relying on them to fulfil their promises of (say) welfare reform and so on, when really I increasingly suspect that Farage and co don't genuinely care about any of that. This crapto deregulation is all they're really in it for.

His gullible minions on Facebook are licking his boots over the Iranian agent channel migrant story. The establishment haven’t been listening to him apparently when he’s been saying it for years! I’m not on Facebook anymore but I do get to see certain posts through others. I hope people are calling him out for being complicit 😂. What a snake.

Farage and co have never cared about the little people. It's the oldest trick in the book to pretend to to gain power.

Also, the freezing of the bank account of a political party is unheard of in modern times,

Not really. Just ask the Palestine Action Group ...

Except Palestine Action is not a political party is it?

Exactly, or even if they were, they're not remotely mainstream, they have no MPs or MEPs... I think one of their members stood once as an independent in a local council election iirc. Not particularly comparable

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/23/how-nigel-farage-reform-to-launder-money-george-cottrell-john-crace

The donations are so, so dodgy, my bet would be that is came from Russia, they’ve already seen what Brexit has done to the UK and must see as a bunch of naïve idiots to have voted for it, so why not support a Reform government and weaken us even further?

Wherever the money came from, it was somewhere worth going to a lot of trouble to hide.

All this faffing and channelling through nth parties.

Well clearly, they weren't much cop at it then, as it got ... found out.

I suspect some rather dim Reformites believed cr*pto was untraceable.

Fair point about PAG - not a political party.

I was reading that Farage is in more trouble with the PSC. as he divulged the fact that he is under investigation for the Cottrell cash. Apparently this is explicitly forbidden (presumably to prevent evidence being relocated).

It’s all so dodgy. I hope this all finally ends farages career! His cult following are still swallowing his rubbish though unfortunately