How WhatsApp messages exposed a politician’s bribery scheme
By BBC, November 21, 2025WhatsApp messages have revealed how a prominent MEP for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party took bribes as part of a pro-Russian influence campaign in the European Parliament.
Nathan Gill, who went on to become leader of Reform UK in Wales, has been jailed after admitting taking money from claimed “pawn” of the main security agency in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Gill was paid thousands of pounds to give TV interviews in favour of a key Putin ally and to make speeches in the European Parliament between December 2018 and July 2019.
The 52-year-old father of seven had pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery and was sentenced to 10 and a half years at the Old Bailey on Friday, November 21, 2025.
Prosecutors found WhatsApp chats between Gill and a Ukrainian called Oleg Voloshyn, a former member of the Ukrainian Parliament for a pro-Russian party.
Gill, an MEP for six years, was also paid to host Putin’s most trusted associate in Ukrainian politics at the parliament in Strasbourg.
Counter terror police, who stopped Gill before boarding a plane to Moscow in 2021, found a message on Gill’s phone which said he would be “fairly rewarded” for organising the event.
Scotland Yard accused Gill of “peddling narratives… beneficial towards Russian interests”. Gill pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery in September.
Farage, now leader of Reform UK, said he was “stunned” that Gill, a former Mormon bishop would have done this.
Farage said he had no knowledge of his “shameful activities” and condemned them “in every possible way”.
Gill was first elected as an MEP for the now defunct UK Independence Party in 2014 and rose through its ranks.
He led UKIP in Wales and was also elected to the Welsh Parliament in 2016.
Gill played a prominent role in the Brexit campaign in Wales and was one of only two MEPs who followed Farage from UKIP into the Brexit Party in 2019.
He had previously told the BBC he had responsibility for The Brexit Party’s group of MEPs as its “head of delegation”. He said that meant he told them where to sit and would “keep them in line”.
His WhatsApp chat history reveals that by this point, Voloshyn had helped prepare two of Gill’s contributions to parliamentary debates in December 2018 and March 2019.
Gill had visited Ukraine in May 2018 and was with Voloshyn at an event to commemorate the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.