Farage has admitted he knew Gill for ‘a very long time’ but claims he didn’t know anything about his pro-Russia activities…
Nigel Farage has finally admitted that he has known ex-Reform leader in Wales Nathan Gill, who has pleaded guilty to accepting pro-Russia bribes, for 20 years.
This comes after weeks of Reform UK distancing itself from the ex-UKIP and Brexit Party politician, with the party’s head of policy, Zia Yusuf, claiming he didn’t know who Gill was. Farage, however, has now admitted that he has known Gill “for a very long time”.
When asked on BBC Breakfast why Reform had been claiming not to know Gill, despite photos showing him posing with Farage, Yusuf said: “Nigel meets tens of thousands of people on an annual basis ultimately – and he can’t be held accountable for the actions of every single person whom he comes into contact with.”
On Question Time last Thursday, Green Party leader Zack Polanski pressed Yusuf on Reform’s claims they don’t know Gill. He said: “So were you lying or was Nigel Farage lying?”
Polanski then asked: “Was he [Gill] stood behind Nigel Farage in the picture or was he not?” Yusuf said: “The number of people standing in a photo with Nigel Farage, there would be hundreds of them.”
On Friday, during a campaign visit for the upcoming Caerphilly by-election, Farage acknowledged, for the first time since Gill’s court appearance on 26 September, that he’s known him for years.
He told journalists: “I’d known this person for a very long time, I knew him in the European Parliament in the UKIP days to be a God-fearing Christian, somebody that you would think was the least corruptible person that you would know.”
Farage also claimed he is the only person in Reform who knew Gill, a statement contradicted by evidence showing Gill pictured alongside Reform deputy leader Richard Tice.
Tice himself denied that he knew Gill, despite sharing a photo with him in April 2021 and saying it was “great to be with Nathan Gill, leader of Reform Wales, campaigning today”.
A journalist questioned Farage on his judgement of character, quoting the Reform leader’s words from 2016, when he said he had worked closely with Gill as UKIP leader in Wales. Farage’s assessment of Gill at the time was that he was “hard-working, honest and loyal”.
Farage dodged the question about his judgement of character, instead asking the journalist: “Have you ever been let down by anybody in your life?”.
The journalist conceded that he had, which Farage used to say: “You have, every single person watching this, following this, will also have been betrayed and let down by someone in their life. It happens.”
The Reform leader has claimed he didn’t know anything about Gill’s pro-Russia activities in Ukraine.
He told BBC Wales: “I didn’t know anything about it, all I knew was that he’d been to Ukraine”. He added: “I told him not to go; he defied me and went. I was completely unaware of any statements that he made.”
Gill took money from Oleg Voloshyn, a former Russian MP who was once described as a “pawn” of Russian secret services and made pro-Russian speeches in the European Parliament, statements to a TV channel and arranged an event with a politician close to Moscow.
Byline Times has revealed that Farage met with Voloshyn’s wife, Nadia Borodin, who worked as a presenter on Channel 112, which is owned by one of Putin’s closest allies, Viktor Medvedchuk.
Farage appeared in a photo with Borodin, after she had done an interview with Gill for Channel 112 at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski, who grilled Yusuf over Reform’s connections with Gill on Thursday’s episode of Question Time, wrote on X: “Glad to see Nigel Farage has finally remembered Nathan Gill, former leader of Reform in Wales – found guilty of taking bribes from Russia.
“Maybe he’ll now remember how much he took from Putin’s propaganda broadcaster Russia Today for all his TV appearances when he was a MEP?”.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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