191: Delo Or No Delo

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Page 94: The Private Eye Podcast 50 min 3 speakers 4 chapters transcribed 12 hours ago
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What generous donation did Reform UK receive and why is it significant?

Unknown 0:01
Yeah. Kukko saapuu paikalle, kun lautaselle pitää saada pikkasen parempaa. Saarioinen. Valmista tuli. Ettehän te nyt voi toimia niin, että teillä valtavat valikoimat, mutta halvimmat hinnat. Kyllä, voidaan. No niin,hän te kyllä tottahan toikin kyllä, että voitte todellisuudessa. Prisma. Iso valikoima. Pienet hinnat.
Andrew Hunter-Murray 0:26
Page ninety four The Private Eye Podcast. Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94. My name's 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 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.
Andrew Hunter-Murray 1:09
And I just think we should celebrate that. I think we're very cynical sometimes about politics. Yeah, and that's the end of the podcast. Thank you very much, everyone, for listening. Thank you. See you next time. Uh, get a subscription to the magazine which features Nigel Foreign. Ranch on the front over a different financial scandal.
Ian Hislop 1:22
And that one, the joke was about him taking five hundred thousand pounds.
Andrew Hunter-Murray 1:26
Chicken feed, as Boris Johnson would have put it. Richard, um you've been covering this for the magazine.
Richard Brooks 1:32
Uh yeah, looking at um the donations from uh Ben Delo. A new v uh name for lots of listeners, I think. A big crypto guy. Uh did very well at university, very clever chap, um, went to work for the banks and hedge funds and so on, then discovered Bitcoin when it um started to emerge, made a lot of money from it, um set up uh a Bitcoin derivative or crypto derivative trading exchange called BitMex, where you could do all sorts of things.
Helen Lewis 2:02
Including crime?
Richard Brooks 2:03
Well the people using it could.
Helen Lewis 2:05
Yes.
Richard Brooks 2:05
It seems.
Helen Lewis 2:06
I mean that is one of the things about cryptocurrencies generally is that if you want to have untraceable money. For say buying drugs or you know, getting around sanctions. They're quite helpful. So did that cause any problems for Ar Ben Delo by any chance?
Andrew Hunter-Murray 2:18
Helen again, I think that's very cynical. I don't think there's any evidence that there was ever any uh any unlawful activity, unless Richard, do you have any is there any evidence of that?
Richard Brooks 2:27
You have to go on the internet and look at the uh the US Department of Justice. Well, hang on. Hang
Andrew Hunter-Murray 2:33
on, before you say what they found, Richard, I should put Dilo's case. I think that's only fair that we put the case for the defence first. Yeah. So traditional in a court of law, but do do feel free. Well, look, as as D Lo himself, an entrepreneur and philanthropist, as he put it, I'll quote him directly here. He wrote he wrote a piece for the telegraph about why he was making this thirty six 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. Right. A prosecutor came after him.
Richard Brooks 3:15
You know, that's like Ronnie Biggs complaining that the police came after him for robbing a train, you know. Um 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 a uh in effect a money laundering operation.
Richard Brooks 3:52
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 3:58
W would that conflict with reform's patriotic agenda at all?
Richard Brooks 4:04
You're you're not saying it's slightly traitorish, right? Yes, given they use that word a lot. Yeah.
Helen Lewis 4:10
But he got c he got convicted, didn't he?
Richard Brooks 4:12
Yeah, he c he well, he pleaded guilty and um he was fined.

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