Gill’s activities emerged in WhatsApp messages on his phone after he was stopped at Manchester Airport on September 13 2021 under counter-terrorism laws.<\/p>\n
In court on Friday, prosecutor Mark Heywood KC said the messages revealed communication between Gill and Mr Voloshyn of an “agreement to receive money in connection with his performance in his duties as a member of the European Parliament”.<\/p>\n
They included “posing questions for the consideration of [the European] parliament, making contact with senior officials of the European Commission at the parliament, arranging for events and making statements”.<\/p>\n
Counter-terrorism detectives also seized devices from Gill’s home and investigators matched WhatsApp messages with statements Gill made in support of pro-Russia media being present in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Some of the statements appeared in Ukrainian media.<\/p>\n
Mr Heywood said the guilty pleas were “satisfactory” because the bribery charges reflected the criminal activities and agreed the conspiracy charge could lie on file.<\/p>\n
Peter Wright KC, defending, acknowledged Gill was facing a substantial jail sentence, but asked for bail for the married father-of-five before his next hearing.<\/p>\n
He told the court: “It is recognised that it is inevitable that the defendant will receive an immediate sentencing to prison.”<\/p>\n
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told the court: “Nathan Gill has admitted having asked questions, made statements and carried out other activities in or connected with the European Parliament in support of pro-Russian parties in the Ukraine conflict.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gill’s activities emerged in WhatsApp messages on his phone after he was stopped at Manchester Airport on September…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-458860","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115284191831119325","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}