Businessman reveals he is behind £75,000 donation to Robert Jenrick – but tax haven questions remain
A businessman has revealed he is the person who donated £75,000 to Robert Jenrick via a company that has taken loans from a tax haven-registered firm.
Phillip Ullmann, who describes himself as a social business entrepreneur, said he provided the donation to the Conservative leadership candidate through Spott Fitness, which he said is part of his family’s group of companies.
Questions were raised over the weekend about the origin of the donation as the fitness coaching app company’s latest accounts show it has no employees, has never made a profit and has more than £300,000 in debts.
In January, the company registered a loan from Centrovalli, a business registered in the British Virgin Islands, as first revealed by Tortoise Media.
British law states companies that donate to political parties or politicians must be UK-based and carry out business in the UK.
Mr Ullmann has now revealed he was behind the donation from Spott Fitness, but did not explain why he did not donate personally, as he has done for several other politicians.
The Labour Party have reported the donations to the Electoral Commission, with the elections watchdog saying it is “carefully considering” the complaint.
Mr Jenrick defended the Spott Fitness donation on Sunday, saying he understood it was “perfectly legal and valid”, but he would not say it was from Mr Ullmann, just that he has “obviously met people who are involved in the company” and it would be set out “on Companies House in the normal way”.
Companies House does not have Mr Ullmann, who sold his family’s recruitment business Cordant Group in 2020, registered as part of the company but does have Mark Dembovsky as the sole director. Mr Dembovsky is also director of Covenant Advisory, the consultancy business Mr Ullmann set up.
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Jenrick defends £75k donation
Mr Ullmann said he is “concerned about the grave challenges” facing the UK and the world and has “come to see that we need huge political change” – which he thinks Mr Jenrick can achieve.
The businessman said: “I also wanted to back Robert Jenrick whose serious solutions to big challenges – including on migration – appeal to me.
“I don’t agree with him on everything but broadly we are aligned.
“I chose to give the money from Spott Fitness, a company which is part of my family’s group of businesses.
“It’s a phenomenal company that’s using tech to improve people’s health and will be a hugely successful business.
Ullmann: Donor transparency important
“But I don’t want there to be any suggestion at all that I’m hiding anything and I understand the importance of donor transparency.
“So I’m happy to confirm my connection to Spott. I love my country, I was born and raised in the UK, and have always paid tax and lived here.
“I’m going to continue to set out my ideas for changing the world and our financial system and am always happy to meet with people and set out my ideas in this space.”
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All four Tory candidates interviewed
Mr Ullmann, whose German-Jewish parents fled the Nazis to come to the UK, said he has previously donated to Labour peer Maurice Glasman as well as Conservative MPs Sir John Hayes and Danny Kruger, the New Conservatives group and the New Social Covenant Unit.
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The political donations register shows ahead of the general election he gave £20,000 to Sir John, £660 worth of FA Cup semi-final tickets to Mr Kruger, who is the chair of New Conservatives and New Social Covent Unit, and £50,000 to the New Conservatives group itself.
Steve Goodrich, head of research and investigations at Transparency International UK, said when companies fund politicians via offshore loans “it raises serious questions about the money’s provenance”.
He added: “Electoral law was supposed to only allow businesses with a substantive UK presence to make political contributions, yet examples like this show it permits anonymous cash from anywhere in the world into our democracy.”
The other Conservative leadership candidates are: Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly.
They are taking part in a series of hustings at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham this week and will be voted down to two by MPs, then members will get to choose between the remaining two and a leader will be announced on 2 November.
Shuttered crypto exchange Garantex is reportedly back under a new name after laundering millions in ruble-backed stablecoins and sending them to a freshly created exchange, according to a Swiss blockchain analytics company.
Global Ledger claims the operators of the Russian exchange have shifted liquidity and customer deposits to Grinex, which they say is “Garantex’s full-fledged successor,” in a report released to X on March 19.
“We can confidently state that Grinex and Garantex are directly connected both onchain and offchain.”
“The movement of funds, including the systematic transfer of A7A5 liquidity, the use of one-time-use wallets, and the involvement of addresses previously associated with Garantex, provides clear onchain proof of their link,” the Global Ledger team said in the report.
After completing its investigation on March 13, Global Ledger says it had found onchain data showing Garantex laundered over $60 million worth of ruble-backed stablecoins called A7A5 and sent them to addresses associated with Grinex.
Global Ledger claims Garantex has moved all its funds over to a newly launched exchange and is back in business. Source: Global Ledger
“In this case, the burning and subsequent minting process was used to launder funds from Garantex, allowing new coins to be minted from a system address with a clean history,” the team said.
A Garantex manager also reportedly told Global Ledger that customers have been visiting the exchange office in person and moving funds from Garantex to Grinex.
“Additionally, offchain indicators, such as transactional patterns, commentaries and exchange behaviors, further reinforce this connection,” it said.
The report also points to a description of Grinex on the Russian crypto tracking site CoinMarketRating, claiming that the owners of Garantex created it. The reports said this shows “Grinex is not an independent entity but rather a full-fledged successor to Garantex, continuing its financial operations despite the exchange’s official shutdown.”
Source: Global Ledger
By March 14, the volume of incoming transactions on Grinex was nearly $30 million, according to Global Ledger. CoinMarketRating shows that the trade volume for the month is now over $68 million, with spot trading topping $2 million.
The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control first hit Garantex with sanctions in April 2022 for allegedly money laundering violations.
Related: US, UK, Australia sanction Zservers for hosting crypto ransomware LockBit
On March 6, the US Department of Justice collaborated with authorities in Germany and Finland to freeze domains associated with Garantex, which they claim processed over $96 billion worth of criminal proceeds since launching in 2019.
Stablecoin operator Tether also froze $27 million in Tether (USDT), on March 6 which forced Garantex to halt all operations, including withdrawals.
Only a few days later, on March 12, officials with India’s Central Bureau of Investigation arrested Aleksej Bešciokov, who allegedly operated Garantex, on US charges that included conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Magazine: How crypto laws are changing across the world in 2025
Ministers are drawing up plans restricting foreign donors from giving unlimited funds to UK political parties, Sky News understands.
Currently, political parties can accept donations from any company registered in the UK – and foreign donors can and have used these companies to make indirect contributions.
The rules allow for British companies to be used in this way even if they don’t make any money at all.
However, Sky News understands that officials are currently looking at restricting donations based on how much money a company makes – either using a profit or a share of revenue to calculate a potential cap for the amount each UK business can give.
The government says this is in line with its manifesto pledge to “protect democracy by strengthening the rules around donations to political parties”.
Senior government sources have told Sky News these changes are partially about Elon Musk.
Officials are said to be anxious about the rumoured donation of $100m (about £80m) that Musk has suggested he would make to Reform UK.
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Nigel Farage says ‘Musk is going to support Reform’
The government’s thinking is that the tech billionaire is likely to do this just before the next election, and they hope they can pass their Elections Bill – the legislation through which the donation loophole would be closed – through parliament before that happens.
The bill would enter parliament in the next session, but ministers have told MPs that they should expect an update to these plans within months.
Musk’s donation would be an astronomical amount in the context of British politics.
The sum would trump all political donations that have been made to any political party this year – and would inevitably make a big impact on campaigning.
Elon Musk is not on the electoral register and the British arm of his company X – X.AI London Limited – has not yet made any money.
Under the proposed changes, this avenue of donating money to Reform UK would not be possible.
Reform UK’s total received donations for 2024 would be considerably higher with £80m from Elon Musk
A government source said this is just one of the options on the table, adding that another change they are considering will mean enhanced due diligence checks on donations from unincorporated associations.
In exclusive polling, Sky News has found that any money given to parties by foreign donors is incredibly unpopular.
A total of 77% of respondents thought foreign nationals who are not registered to vote in the UK should not be allowed to donate to political parties, while only 7% thought they should be.
Even looking specifically at Reform UK voters, who would likely benefit from an Elon Musk donation, the percentage is roughly the same: 73% said they shouldn’t donate to British politics at all, while 7% said they should.
A total of 77% of respondents said foreign nationals should not be allowed to donate to UK political parties
There is a lot of cash swirling all around Westminster and foreign money can and does enter UK politics.
Transparency International found almost £1 in every £10 donated to parties and politicians came from unknown or dubious sources between 2001 and 2024.
Whatever the motivation, these changes could bring greater transparency to what’s behind any murky money swirling into Westminster.
Crypto regulations must be enacted through an act of Congress to become permanent and meaningful pieces of legislation, according to former Congressman Wiley Nickel.
In an exclusive video interview with Cointelegraph’s Turner Wright, Nickel urged bipartisan collaboration to push through comprehensive crypto regulations. The former Congressman added:
“I think it’s really important for anybody who cares about this issue to step back and realize that if you want lasting change in Washington, you must move legislation through Congress. Otherwise, if you’re talking about executive orders, it will just go back and forth.”
“You don’t want to have the mess that we saw just months ago with Gary Gensler’s SEC — you need to get legislation through Congress,” Nickel reiterated.
President Trump’s Jan. 23 executive order establishing the Working Group on Digital Assets, which also prohibited the development of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), and the order establishing a Bitcoin strategic reserve alongside a separate crypto stockpile, were both examples of executive actions that can be reversed at a later date.
Former Congressman Wiley Nickel is pictured sitting second from the left at the Blockworks Digital Asset Summit. Source: Cointelegraph
Related: Congress on track for stablecoin, market structure bills by August: Blockchain Association
Both chambers of Congress rush to push through meaningful legislation
Rep. Tom Emmer, the majority whip of the United States House of Representatives, reintroduced legislation banning a CBDC in the US on March 6.
Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis also reintroduced the Bitcoin Act in March, which builds upon an earlier bill of the same title but allows the US to purchase more than 1 million Bitcoin (BTC).
Senator Lummis’ Bitcoin Act of 2025. Source: Senator Cynthia Lummis
Rep. Byron Donalds recently announced that he would draft legislation to codify the Bitcoin strategic reserve into law — shielding President Trump’s original executive order from being overturned by a future administration.
On March 12, the House of Representatives repealed the IRS broker rule requiring decentralized finance platforms to report information to the Internal Revenue Service in a 292-131 vote.
Speaking at this year’s Blockworks Digital Asset Summit, Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna said that Congress should be able to pass comprehensive crypto regulation in 2025, including a stablecoin bill and a market structure bill.
Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered
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