Just who is Posh George?George Cottrell is Nigel Farage’s right-hand man. Nicknamed “Posh George”, his mum once dated King Charles and he is closely involved in Reform UK’s operation. He is often photographed at events with Farage, and last year paid £15,000 for his boss to visit Elon Musk in Florida. But what exactly does Cottrell do for the party? “There is one rule: don’t ask what George does,” a Reform staffer has said. We know he’s an aristocratic private banker who was once convicted of fraud in the US. He has his own PR team and has hired an expensive law firm to monitor the media for stories about him. Today a HOPE not hate investigation has unearthed some even stranger details about George Cottrell. We looked into four key statements that either he has made in the media or have been made about him. None of them stand up to scrutiny.
Was he a banker at JP Morgan and Credit Suisse? 💼A LinkedIn page in Cottrell’s name said he worked for the two private banks as a teenager at the same time. We asked both banks, who said they had no record of him working there.
Was he in the Army? đź’‚A recent article quoted an anonymous school friend who said Cottrell enlisted as a squaddie, doing several months of basic training. But we asked the Army and they said there was no record of him ever serving.
Why was he arrested in the US in 2016 and convicted of fraud? 👮In an interview, Cottrell said he went to a boozy dinner in Las Vegas with property investors who asked him how to launder drug money. He said he drunkenly gave them advice and never contacted them again. But his own guilty plea in court said he knew what he was doing: he posted an offer to illegally launder money on the dark web and plotted a criminal scheme over seven months. What he didn’t know was that those property investors were undercover agents with the US Internal Revenue Service.
Has he kicked his gambling habit? đź’°In earlier interviews, Cottrell has said his troubles with gambling got him expelled from school and disinherited by his parents. But recently he bragged about losing $53 million playing poker in a casino. Is a self-confessed gambling addict capable of losing a fortune in a night of cards best placed to steer Reform towards Downing Street?
Cottrell declined to comment on the record. His representative told us that he has never “made misleading claims about his past.” In promoting Reform last month, Nigel Farage told an audience: “Vote for a lawmaker, not a lawbreaker.” On this, he’s right. 👉 Click here to read the full story.
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