Delo Or No Delo

Ian Hislop (0:00)

Page 94, The Private Eye Podcast.

Andrew Hunter Murray (0:03)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Page 94 My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the iStudio with Ian Hislop, Helen Lewis, and Richard Brooks.

We've got some good news to discuss today, and I think it's important to start sometimes with positive news, because we often talk about negative stories, and we talk about corruption, and I think it's important that we say when something's gone right. So we're here to cover an amazing act of generosity in British political life, which is that out of complete selflessness, as far as I can tell, two billionaires have decided to give Reform UK 72 million quid between them, 36 million each. They're giving it now, and they don't want anything in return. And I just think we should celebrate that. I think we're very cynical sometimes about politics.

Ian Hislop (0:47)

Yeah, and that's the end of the podcast. Thank you very much, everyone, for listening.

Andrew Hunter Murray (0:50)

Thank you. See you next time. Get a subscription to the magazine, which features Nigel Farage on the front, over a different financial scandal.

Ian Hislop (0:56)

And that one, the joke, was about him taking 500,000 pounds.

Andrew Hunter Murray (1:00)

Check and feed, as Boris Johnson would have put it. Richard, you've been covering this for the magazine.

Richard Brooks (1:06)

Yeah, looking at the donations from Ben Delo.

Andrew Hunter Murray (1:10)

A new name for lots of listeners, I think.

Richard Brooks (1:13)

A big crypto guy. Did very well at university, very clever chap. Went to work for banks and hedge funds and so on, then discovered Bitcoin when it started to emerge. Made a lot of money from it.

Set up a Bitcoin derivative or crypto derivative trading exchange called BitMEX, where you could do all sorts of things.

Helen Lewis (1:36)

Including crime?

Richard Brooks (1:37)

Well, the people using it could, it seems.

Helen Lewis (1:40)

I mean, that is one of the things about cryptocurrencies generally is if you want to have untraceable money for, say, buying drugs or getting around sanctions, they're quite helpful. So did that cause any problems for our Ben Delo by any chance?

Andrew Hunter Murray (1:52)

Helen, again, I think that's very cynical. I don't think there's any evidence that there was ever any unlawful activity unless, Richard, you have any, is there any evidence of that?

Richard Brooks (2:00)

It's quite hard to find. In fact, you have to go on the internet and look at the US Department of Justice.

Andrew Hunter Murray (2:06)

Well, hang on. Before you say what they found, Richard, I should put Delo's case. I think that's only fair that we put the case for the defense first.

Ian Hislop (2:13)

Yeah.

Andrew Hunter Murray (2:13)

So-

Ian Hislop (2:14)

Not traditional in a court of law, but do feel free.

Andrew Hunter Murray (2:17)

Well, look, as Delo, himself an entrepreneur and philanthropist, as he put it, I'll quote him directly here. He wrote a piece for The Telegraph about why he was making this 36 million pound donation to Reform.

Despite the fact that we ran an honest shop and never lost a penny of customer funds to a hack or misallocation, a US prosecutor went after us for not keeping sufficient records on our customers. We got through it and I kept calm and carried on with my philanthropy.

Richard Brooks (2:46)

Right. A prosecutor came after him.

You know, that's like Ronnie Biggs complaining that the police came after him for robbing a train. You know, they did come after him. It seems with good reason and found that he was running what they called, he and his co-founders were running what they called an effect, a money laundering operation. Because they were essentially having anybody to come on to their platform, do their trading without any checks. And then they misled the authorities about whether they were making those checks. They, for example, took on people who were from Iran and didn't then decide to ask, well, hang on a minute, where's your money coming from? So there was a lot of sanctions related violations.

Ian Hislop (3:32)

Would that conflict with Reform's patriotic agenda at all?

Richard Brooks (3:38)

You're not saying it's slightly traitorish, are you?

Ian Hislop (3:41)

Yes, given they used that word a lot.

Richard Brooks (3:43)

Yeah.

Helen Lewis (3:43)

But he got convicted, didn't he?

Richard Brooks (3:46)

Yeah, well, he pleaded guilty and he was fined. He got 30 months probation and a large fine.

Ian Hislop (3:54)

And that report is pretty severe.

Helen Lewis (3:56)

Yeah.