In January last year one of Britain’s largest banks alerted the UK’s National Crime Agency to a suspicious transaction that it suspected might involve both money laundering and an illegal political donation. The secret alert was leaked to the New York Times last week.
Barclays Bank filed this alert with the NCA over a payment of $630,225 to the Conservative Party from its then treasurer, Israeli-born art dealer Ehud ‘Udi’ Sheleg. The bank said it believed the donation (made almost three years earlier in February 2018) had actually come from Sheleg’s father-in-law – Sergei Kopytov, a hotel tycoon closely linked to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
In the official register of party donations, the payment is recorded as a £450,000 gift from Ehud Sheleg (€530,000 at today’s exchange rates). Yet according to the bank: “Kopytov can be stated with considerable certainty to have been the true source of the donation”.
Barclays said they were “able to trace a clear line back from this donation to its ultimate source”. What added to their suspicions was that Kopytov had transferred $2.5 million from his Russian bank account to a joint account belonging to Sheleg and his wife. That $2.5 million was then shuffled around various otherwise empty accounts in various countries, held in the Shelegs’ name, and eventually into a Sheleg family trust account known as the Tov Settlement (registered in the British Virgin Islands), before being paid into the Shelegs’ Barclays account in the UK.
The donation from Sheleg to the Conservative Party was made one day later.
It is illegal in the UK for a political party to accept more than £500 from any foreign citizen who is not registered to vote in this country. Kopytov was not and never has been registered to vote in the UK. He was involved in the Russian puppet government of the Crimea until its annexation by Moscow in 2014, latterly as finance minister, and has always been a loyal Putin ally.
A few weeks after this shuffling of his father-in-law’s millions, Ehud Sheleg was appointed treasurer of the Conservative Party, at first holding the post jointly with another Jewish businessman, Sir Mick Davis.
There is no evidence that Sir Mick Davis, who was born in South Africa and is Chairman of the UK’s Holocaust Memorial Commission, had any knowledge of suspicious transactions involving his co-treasurer Sheleg.
According to Electoral Commission records, Sheleg gave the Conservative Party a total of £550,000 in 2017; more than £1.3 million in 2018; and almost £2 million in 2019.
It would perhaps be cynical to imagine any connection between this generosity and the decision by Prime Minister Theresa May to award Sheleg a knighthood in 2019. The newly titled Sir Ehud Sheleg was reappointed by Mrs May’s successor Boris Johnson as sole treasurer of the Conservative Party that summer, when Sir Mick Davis stepped down. Sheleg had been a close ally and financial supporter of Johnson’s during his time as Mayor of London.
It is often regarded as “anti-semitic” to question the loyalties of Zionist Jews as they move around the world taking on different nationalities and passports. Yet Sheleg himself during an interview in 2018 said of his ties to Britain: “I was brought up, albeit in Israel, with the sentiment of very strong ties to Britain. In the family of nations, this [Britain] has to be my favourite one. Second to my homeland [Israel], of course.”
Surely it is legitimate to question whether a man who admits that his primary loyalty is to another country, is suitable to hold the position of Treasurer of the governing party?
Another “anti-semitic” offence is to draw attention to the disproportionate involvement of Jews in the promotion of contemporary art, and the overturning of traditional notions of artistic merit.
Spanish history student Isabel Peralta recently had a video banned from YouTube simply because she mentioned Jews briefly in part of a discussion of art and politics. (In a future issue of Heritage and Destiny magazine, Isabel will discuss this topic of art and the “decline of the West”.)
Yet Ehud Sheleg could almost have been invented to prove Isabel Peralta’s point. Over the past twenty years he has transformed his company Halcyon into one of the world’s largest specialists in contemporary art. On the cabinets and sideboards of Halcyon’s headquarters in New Bond Street, London, Sheleg proudly displays a series of One Money sculptures by Santiago Montoya, an artist whom he has promoted in exhibitions around the world.
According to Halcyon’s website: “In Money Talks, Santiago Montoya combines the pop vocabulary of Warhol and a multitude of international banknotes, using the world’s leading currencies as his aesthetic arena.”
Miguel Palacios – Professor of Finance at Vanderbilt University – is quoted by Sheleg’s company as saying: “Aristotle would be amazed. Santiago made something out of nothing – because he turned a bill of exchange into an object of art.”
Making something out of nothing. Shuffling millions around the world, eventually into the bank account of the UK’s ruling party. Maintaining close family and personal ties from the Kremlin to Whitehall. Perhaps Ehud Sheleg isn’t a real person at all, but an “anti-semitic” trope or meme invented by Isabel Peralta?
UPDATE: 17TH MAY
A senior Labour MP has called on the Conservative Party to answer “serious questions” about their former treasurer Sheleg and his 2018 donation.
Speaking in Parliament on 17th May, Anneliese Dodds asked:
“Did Sir Ehud host a reception with the Russian ambassador to the UK, following the annexation of Crimea?
“Are assets apparently owned by Mr Kopytov like, for example, a Mercedes Benz car, used by individuals involved in the Russian state?
“Did the bank transfer at issue in the New York Times article originate from a Russian bank? Were sanctioned entities involved?
“Exactly what current and former links do the Sheleg/Kopytov family hold with key actors in the Russian state? And finally, has electoral law been broken and relatedly has our national security been compromised?”
Sheleg’s spokesman has insisted that his father-in-law is not a Putin ally and is actually a “refugee” in the Czech Republic, having “lost his job as a senior civil servant” when Russia annexed Ukraine in 2018.
The spokesman did not explain how, if Kopytov “lost his job” in 2014 and became a refugee, he was in a position to transfer $2.5 million from a Russian bank account to Sheleg in 2018?
It’s not unusual for Sheleg and his ilk to have shifting loyalties, but there is clearly much more to learn about this strange affair.
