Comedy death threats from Lowles friend Ian Austin MP?

Today's Wolverhampton Express and Star carries the story "Death threat claim by Labour MP Ian Austin over challenge to UKIP's NHS policy".

In it, Mr Austin makes a number of outlandish, not to mention unsupported, claims that he was sent an anonymous death threat after criticising comments by UKIP leader Nigel Farage regarding

So terrified, he hasn't reported it to the police. Austin has form with HnH
director Nick Lowles, and there are few depths to which he wouldn't stoop.

privatisation of the NHS. Mr Austin, who is currently running a campaign to save Dudley Police Station from a program of cuts which the Labour Party is responsible for, makes no mention of his intention to report this death threat to the police, and in fact offers no evidence for its existence beyond his own tweet. Even the local newspapers hedges its bets on this one by saying he claimed it rather than that it had seen it. We presume that had it existed it would have been sent immediately to the local newspaper. The problem with doing so, we assume, is that had he done so then the police would have investigated.

UKIP Cllr Dean Perks, a previous
victim of Austin's ethics

We are currently seeing a huge number of comments and messages posted across social media and on news websites which purport to come from UKIP members. This follows on from the claims made by a Labour campaign team that their stall was overturned by 'UKIP thugs': it is worth noting that the claims that they identified themselves as UKIP was missing from the first reports of the story.

Of course, any fool can set up an account and pretend to be a UKIP supporter, voter or member. Increasingly, we are seeing these picked up as evidence of UKIP racism/sexism/homophobia/extremism etc, particularly by people like Ian Austin. How convenient! Of course, all parties have their idiots: this is not true of UKIP alone. Even as you read this, there is a village somewhere lamenting the loss of Mr Austin. There are several truths we should remember about him particularly.

Mr Austin is a friend of HnH director Nick Lowles. To quote Lowles, "Ian is a long-time friend of Searchlight, and by that I mean since he was in his mid-teens, but today he is more helpful advising us on a media strategy". What better media strategy than to use his position to lend spurious credibility to internet nonsense than by publicising dubious threats from Labour Party sockpuppet accounts?

Mr Austin also has form on the anti-UKIP front: we covered earlier this year his role in a widely publicised story regarding local UKIP chairman and councillor Dean Perks - Did Labour MP release confidential constituency mail to damage UKIP candidate in Dudley?.

Ian Austin MP. Somewhere in England, a village has lost
its idiot and is desperately searching for him.

One thing we can be quite certain of. There is a campaign underway to create false accounts of
imaginary UKIP-supporting people and to then use those accounts to blacken UKIPs name. Austin, who by Nick Lowles own admission used to hang around NF demonstrations - "Ian is a long-time friend of Searchlight, and by that I mean since he was in his mid-teens, but today he is more helpful advising us on a media strategy than hanging round National Front demonstrations gathering intelligence" - is no stranger to underhand methods and outright dishonesty. His claims should be read in that light.

On the wider point of false UKIP accounts on social media and elsewhere, we can all play a part in minimising their effect by following a few simple guidelines:

1. Be careful who you accept as a friend on Facebook. If it is brand new account with nothing but UKIP related friends, be wary of accepting any requests
2. Be careful what you say on social media. Labour and their puppets at Hope not Hate have teams of people who do nothing but trawl comments looking for something they can use against us. Bear this in mind when commenting.
3. Remember that even innocuous comments and jokes can be used against us when taken out of context.
4. Do not get suckered into arguments by trolls - they are trying to make you lose your temper and type something in the heat of the moment which you will later regret.
5. Warn your friends if you are concerned about an account, or if they say something which goes beyond the pale.

Most importantly, remember that there are no depths to which either Labour or the Tories would not stoop in order to maintain their hold on power. Councillors, MPs, MEPs - these all represent considerable influence and millions of pounds worth of financing to the people and parties which control them. We are engaged in a high stakes game against entrenched interests at the highest levels of the establishment. UKIPs 'People's Army' can win, but only if we keep our eye on the ball at all times.

Jasna Badzak on the warpath again with Tory help (but let's pretend it's not official help)

Observers of UKIP goings-on will have noticed recently that convicted fraudster and forger Jasna Badzak's psychotic ramblings have been given an extra push by the nostril fuelled Louise Mensch, who has been re-tweeting Badzak like there is no tomorrow.

Having abandoned her constituents in Corby for the high life in New York, former Tory MP Mensch now appears preoccupied with attempting to tie Mark Reckless to the nonsense peddled by assorted conspiracy theorists. Top of the list of these is Ms Badzak, who is determined to push the line that Gerard Batten, UKIP MEP for London, is so powerful that he engineered her conviction for stealing over £3k off of him and then forging her bank statement to cover it up by organising a conspiracy which involved the judiciary, her bank, the Metropolitan Police and god knows who else.

Ms Badzak meanwhile has most recently had her collar felt once again by London's finest when she was arrested and charged last Tuesday for her continued harassment of Mr Batten. Yet another criminal conviction will shortly appear on her record over this when it comes to court.

Ms Badzak has a history of making wild allegations. She left the Tory party some years ago making much the same complaints she now directs against UKIP, although as the Tories have found a means of publicising her nonsense without having their fingerprints directly on it, that is all forgotten for now. In case anybody had forgotten just how barking mad she is, we repost below a blog posting about her long term criminal activities:

HnH push story from convicted fraudster with links to Russian mafia in desperation to halt the rise of UKIP

Desperation strikes at both the Times and Hope not Hate today as they publish an article based on allegations made by Jasna Badzak, a former Tory candidate who briefly worked for UKIP before being arrested and convicted of fraud and forgery after stealing £3000 from UKIP MEP Gerard Batten. Following her conviction, Batten bankrupted her, although despite this she remains listed as the director of several companies with Companies House.

Since her conviction, Badzak has clearly gone off the deep end, with constant tweets and e-mails about UKIP including allegations that the Metropolitan Police are colluding with UKIP and Boris Johnson (yes, I know...) to 'hush up' her mad ravings.

This is not of course the first time that Hope not Hate have used the ravings of those who clearly suffer from a mental illness in their campaign, and there is a touch of irony in that Hope not Hate themselves are being investigated for VAT fraud while Badzak is under investigation for benefits fraud, offences under the Companies Act, and further acts of forgery including allegedly the letter which is the basis of the Times article.

The best expose we have read of her madness, not to mention her criminality, is contained in a blog post by Mark Croucher, former UKIP Director of Communications and now a freelance journalist. In it, he examines Badzak's links with the Russian mob and her long running 'Finance Central Europe' scam which netted her thousands of pounds while simultaneously claiming benefits in the UK. The original article can be found at http://itmaynotbeillegalbut.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/does-serbian-fraudster-have-links-to.html, but we repost the text in full here with the author's permission, for which we thank him!

Friday, November 8, 2013

Does Serbian fraudster have links to Russian mob? - a look at Jasna Badzak

A Serbian immigrant from Bosnia who was convicted last month of perpetrating a fraud on UKIP MEP Gerard Batten has a long history of fraud, it was revealed today.

42 year old Jasna Badzak of Harrow Road, Kilburn, West London plead not guilty to charges of forgery and fraud but was found guilty by the jury at her trial at Southwark Crown Court last month. She had doctored bank statements to show she had not received her wages, but records showed that after Mr Batten paid her from his own pocket she went on a shopping trip to Harrods. When Mr Batten attempted to recover the money, she launched a series of Employment Tribunal cases against him, all of which were dismissed. She received a 12 months suspended sentence and a 4 month curfew order for these offences, while the judge in the case, Michael Gledhill QC, said that if it were not for her son, she would have received an immediate prison term.

Jasna Badzak - also known as Maya Braun -
after her conviction for fraud and forgery

Things may have gone harder for Badzak had the judge been aware of the full extent of her dishonesty which dated back to shortly after her arrival in the UK as a refugee from Mostar in the early 90's.

Despite her CV claiming she was a 'high level business analyst' for the Economist Group, the Economist confirmed that they had no record of an employee or a subcontractor of that name. She did at one stage sell advertising space in European Voice magazine for an advertising sales company - KP Sales Ltd - but that is a far cry from the 'consultancy and business development' role she awarded herself. She also claimed to have "taken sole charge of European Voice and ensured it’s (sic) survival’.

The real frauds begin around the turn of the millennium, however. At that time, she emerged as managing director of a company called 'Finance Central Europe', which she claimed to have bought off the Economist when it 'consolidated or spun off some of it's operations'. The Economist has never had a publication by that name, although it did have a similarly named one which it remained the owners of.

Finance Central Europe presented itself as a magazine which specialised in the subjects which one might expect given its title. There is just one problem - nobody has ever seen a copy of the magazine, which operated from a maildrop operated by Citibox Ltd in Central London and which was registered at Badzak's home address. Her and her husband, Dragomir Mikulic, were the sole directors, while it's website (now removed) was a simple text affair with no content.

So what did Finance Central Europe do? It appears to have been in the business of selling non-existent business awards to companies - some unsuspecting, some involved in organised crime - across Eastern Europe. Badzak, occasionally using the alias Maya Braun, would contact companies in Central Europe offering them research packages costing between £ 485 and £ 5250. As revealed in an article in Montenegran newspaper 'The Monitor', they offered a ranking service for banks - the difference with their service was that only banks which paid for their 'research' - a collation of publicly available figures - would be ranked. The 'Monitor' article followed an earlier expose in a Bosnian newspaper - 'Independent' - based in Banja Luka which precipitated the threat of a lawsuit against them for £1m each. While the lawsuit never materialised, the lawyer 'hired' by Finance Central Europe proved to be Badzak's father-in-law according to Boris Djurik, the paper's foreign correspondent. 'Independent' responded by re-publishing the article, along with a selection of comments from its readers. The comments included claims that Badzak and her mother were defrauding the British social security system and that that fraud was continuing.

When it came to issuing the awards, simply buying the research packages weren't enough. There were further fees to be entered into consideration, a premium level report had to be commissioned, and then there was a formal entry fee for judging. The awards issued reflected how much had been paid, and could cost in excess of £20,000 per award per year.

Now, some of the banks which effectively purchased their awards from Badzak were reputable companies simply unfamiliar with doing business in Western Europe and who thought that publicising such awards would show their increasing strength. Others, however, had rather less reputable motives.

Universal Bank of Moldova began buying FCE awards as far back as 1998 and continued to do so through 2007, according to their website which is currently under re-construction. Universal Bank is quite interesting, as it was at one stage owned by Russian banker German Geruntsov. Geruntsov was gunned down in the street outside his London home in 2012, supposedly by a Serbian hitman. Geruntsov himself was a suspect in the assassination of Russian state Duma deputy Ruslan Amadayev, who was investigating corruption on a massive scale by companies owned by Geruntsov and his business partner, Alexander Antonov. After Geruntosov fell out with Antonov, the latter and his son were also assassinated. Universal Bank of Moldova (Best bank in Moldova, Finance Central Europe Awards 2006) is suspected of holding over £1.5bn embezzled from the Russian railway network on behalf of the Russian mafia.

This is not all. When you look at other banks which have won Finance Central Europe awards, a surprisingly high percentage are under investigation or have been closed down for links with either Serbian organised crime or the Russian mafia. What Badzak's awards managed to achieve was to lend the banks a spurious credibility and plausibility by making them appear as if they had won awards from a company linked to the Economist magazine of London. Even worse, gullible but apparently honest banks such as DSK Bank of Bulgaria continue to tout such awards in the mistaken belief that they have won honestly - DSK was awarded 'bank of the decade, 2000-2010' by FCE.

The fraud appears to have not just been limited to banks, however. At various times, non-financial companies also received awards from Finance Central Europe, including Serbian Railways and the Sarajevo Brewery.

So, how much has Badzak made from her fraudulent activities? It is difficult to say, as Finance Central Europe Ltd was struck off the register in 2004, and in any case never filed any accounts. Despite this, it continued to trade as a UK limited company until early last year, and may still be doing so. I have found evidence of at least 130 awards on the internet over the past few years, although several of these have now disappeared - either the awards have been removed from webpages, or the company websites have disappeared completely. A not unreasonable estimate of her income from these scams would be in the region of £100,000 per year, and all the while she was also allegedly claiming benefits in the UK as a refugee - she later became a naturalised British citizen.

Is this all? Apparently not. According to the Monitor, there is a link between Badzak’s ‘magazine’ and another rating company, this one called Global Ratings Ltd. Global Ratings Ltd is, as the article suggests, another company scamming businesses in the Balkans. Like Finance Central Europe Ltd, it was also struck off the register in 2004, although it’s ownership was more convoluted than Badzaks company. Shareholders in Global Ratings Ltd were two companies – Financial Results LLC of 1072 Folsom Street, San Francisco, Ca – the address is a maildrop – and Star Premier Corporation, PO Box 3321, Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands – another maildrop. Registered directors were Frank and Ellen McGlinn of 6, Divert Road, Gourock, Renfrewshire, Scotland. At the time of writing, Frank McGlinn is the director of 5 companies, and is listed as having been a director of 7 others which have been struck off the register, including Global Rating Ltd. The awards made by this company followed a similar pattern, although also caught a number of unsuspecting companies. How? It invited their directors to gala award dinners in London to collect their awards, and then afterwards presented them with a bill for the dinner and accommodation of over £5,000 each: rather expensive rubber chicken. This scam stretched outside the Balkans and their immediate surroundings, gathering victims in the Ukraine, Uzbhekistan and as far afield as India. My investigations into the precise form of the link between Badzak and McGlinn are continuing.

The question must be will Badzak ever be prosecuted for any of this? Clearly the benefit fraud - which has been reported - is the most likely, although with Finance Central Europe's bank account presumably being held offshore, and with the limited company struck off long before the fraud finished - assuming it is not still being perpetrated - it is difficult to know who exactly will investigate and/or prosecute. As for Badzak's links with organised crime, who knows? Was she a useful tool to make mafia and organised crime controlled banks appear respectable, or was she a willing part of the scheme to make them so? Either way, a 12 month suspended sentence seems like a stroll in the park compared to her crimes.

Lowles attempt to evade Lobbying Act breaks electoral funding law as 30% of website users non-UK resident

Website campaign accepts donations from impermissible donors

Things are set to go from bad to worse for Nick Lowles following his latest attempt to get around the reporting requirements for electoral expenditure to the Electoral Commission.

The new lobbying act (more formerly the Transparency of Lobbying, non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014) has caused problems for his personal cash cow and influence machine.

Yesterday saw him asking for donations of £1 from each of the people who visit Hope not Hate's website in order to demonstrate - falsely - that they're a grass roots organisation and not a professional Labour Party front financed by the Unions. This overlooks the reality that in the 2010 general election, 83% of their funding came from the Unions or organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Trust, and only 17% from donations from the general public even if we stretch the term 'general public' to its limits. Desperation has driven him to repeat that call this morning: while the normal fare of internet memes with bland platitudes gain many hundreds of shares, yesterday and today's call for £1 donations have generated just 2 shares. One from a self-professed UAF/SWP supporter linked to AntiFa, and the other from someone who claims not to have enough money to afford a quid.

Just one small problem though. Although the £1 donations may help him pretend he has grass roots 


HnH's 'traffic sources' according to internet
traffic and ranking company Alexa.
20% of HnH''s web traffic is from Belgium.

support, they are likely to raise another problem. If you look at the analytics for Hope not Hate's website, you will notice that only 70% of the website's traffic is from the UK. Almost 20% is from Belgium - what organisations could be based there which have a vested interest in an anti-UKIP group, we wonder? - and 7% from the United States: HnH's consultants, Blue State Digital, are based there. Lets not forget that Blue State Digital 'accidentally' forgot to bill Hope not Hate VAT back in 2010 either, thereby evading at least £70,000 of tax.

In case its not clear, the big red button
says 'Donate' on it

As you can see from the infographic, this causes something of a problem for Nick. Why? Because at the bottom of the page where he is advertising for people to become an HnH supporter for only £1, it doesn't say 'Pay', it says 'Donate'. And, in fact, a donation it is, because you don't actually get anything for your money apart from a thank you e-mail: in case Nick has it changed, we've screen-grabbed it for posterity.

So what is the problem? Hope not Hate is planning to use these funds to campaign against UKIP. Lowles wrote a long, self-congratulatory article praising himself on the 10th anniversary of Hope not Hate and setting out how UKIP is now the target, while the donation advert itself specifically states "All the money raised will go directly to our 2015 campaign fund." There's only one problem with that. He is touting for donations amongst a pool of internet users of which barely 70% are UK resident. The other 30% don't live in the UK and therefore, according to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (Schedule 11, part I, to be precise) these people are impermissible donors from whom Hope not Hate can not accept even a penny.

Despite this, nowhere on the donation form does it ask whether people are permissible donors, and in fact it gives a pull down list of countries and asks for 'Region/State/Province' almost as if they expect impermissible donors to use the site.

Needless to say, we will be drawing this to the attention of the Electoral Commission. We have had a couple of people who are impermissible donors make a contribution to their campaign funds, and each time, it was accepted with the following message:


Nick and the HnH team thanking us for our impermissible donation to their
anti-UKIP general election fund. Made by a non resident, non-UK national.

UPDATE - 14:30hrs

Nick Lowles has just posted on his blog that to date they have received contributions from 'over 2000' people, and he is upping their target to 3,000 by Friday. Which means by Friday, he will have taken donations from around 900 impermissible donors for their political campaign against UKIP.