Nigel Farage has never been far from danger his entire career
Cast your eye over Nigel Farage’s CV and you realise he is a man who never seems far from danger.
At the start of his career in 1982 he joined the notorious US investment bank Drexel as a commodities trader. Drexel would collapse eight years later after its senior executive, Michael Milken, was sent to prison and fined $600m after pleading guilty for violating securities law (he was later pardoned by Donald Trump).
In 1986, Farage joined Credit Lyonnais, the French bank which in 1991 took over struggling US insurance business Executive Life, via an illicit ownership structure that concealed its true control over the business. Credit Lyonnais ultimately agreed to pay a $771m settlement over false statements to regulators in connection with the deal.
Then in 1994 Farage joined Refco, a New York-based broker which later collapsed after its British chief executive was sent to prison for illegally concealing more than $400m of bad debts (he was later deported back to the UK).
In 2003 Farage joined Natixis, the French investment firm which five years later revealed a $600m exposure to the Ponzi scheme orchestrated by infamous Wall Street scammer Bernie Madoff (Madoff later died in prison).
Farage now finds his nascent party, Reform UK, caught up in a police investigation over its handling of donations that could turn out to be illegal. He and the party deny any wrongdoing.
I should be clear: There’s no suggestion that Farage was involved in any of the criminal activity in the array of finance firms he worked for before quitting the City to enter politics.
For decades, though, he has been in the professional orbit of people who have sailed very close to the wind. That does not make him guilty by association, but it may mean that, as he seeks to forge a path to power at the next general election, he may have more landmines to dodge than most.