Prominent Reform member Arron Banks hired private investigators to look into Sunday Times journalist Gabriel Pogrund after his reporting on Nigel Farage’s finances, the New Statesman can reveal.
Banks is a multi-millionaire businessman, and was a major Ukip donor. He co-founded the Leave.EU pro-Brexit campaign and, in May 2025, he stood unsuccessfully as the Reform candidate in the West of England mayoral election. Last month, an investigation led by Pogrund, editor of the Sunday Times’s Insight team, revealed that Farage had been secretly funded by convicted criminal George Cottrell, known as “Posh George”.
The New Statesman can reveal that Banks directed investigators from Precision Risk and Intelligence (a private investigation firm he previously owned, which is now dissolved), to look into Pogrund after the Insight story. Banks did not deny he had launched the probe. “We believe the Sunday Times used hacked information and that was an area of interest. We do have an investigative arm that’s got advanced capabilities,” he told the New Statesman.
A Sunday Times spokesperson said: “If what Mr Banks claims to have done is true then it is reprehensible that his reaction to our reporting is to place a journalist under surveillance… This story was not based on hacked information. It was based on responsible and professional journalism.”
When asked specifically if he had paid investigators to look into Pogrund, Banks said: “When you live by the sword, you die by the sword.”
[Further reading: Are we living under “woke Blue Labour”?]