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Ministers have ordered an urgent review into foreign financial interference in UK politics following the jailing of former Welsh Reform UK leader Nathan Gill for accepting bribes to advance Russian interests.
The independent review, which will be led by a former senior civil servant, will assess the UK’s rules on political financing and the safeguards in place to detect and prevent “illicit money from abroad”.
The review will also look at the rules around cryptocurrencies, which Nigel Farage’s Reform party has said it will accept as a form of political donation.
Security minister Dan Jarvis said the review, which is expected to conclude by March, would “help to strengthen our democracy against covert attempts to interfere with our sovereign affairs”.
“It will rigorously test the financial safeguards we currently have in place and ensure we have all the tools necessary to disrupt and deter threats,” Jarvis added.
Gill, also formerly the leader of Reform in Wales, was last month sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for taking about £40,000 worth of bribes between 2018 and 2019 when he was an MEP.
In return, he made pro-Russian statements in the European parliament, along with giving interviews and writing opinion pieces that advanced Russian narratives.
He took the bribes from a pro-Russian politician in Ukraine, Oleg Voloshyn, according to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Gill was a member of the European parliament from 2014 to 2020, first for Ukip and then for the Brexit party, which was later rebranded Reform. He served as Reform’s leader in Wales in 2021.
Philip Rycroft, the former permanent secretary of the Department for Exiting the EU, has been appointed to lead the review.
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