Nigel Farage Funder George Cottrell’s Accountant Co-Invested With Russia-Linked Indicted Cocaine Trafficker

Artemon, the accountancy firm that administers George Cottrell’s Tivat company, co-invested in a property development with a company owned by an indicted drug-trafficker. The trafficker, Mileta Ojdanić, is a former police officer indicted by state authorities in 2024 for organising an alleged cocaine-trafficking and money-laundering operation called the “police cartel”.

Cottrell is a convicted fraudster, who has personally funded Nigel Farage’s travel, security and staff costs. His mother’s donations to Reform UK are now under criminal investigation. It has also been confirmed that he transferred £2 million to Fiona Cottrell days before her donations to Reform UK.

Artemon is the corporate service provider that administers Cottrell’s Montenegro company, registered as Private Family Office. But it simultaneously administers companies owned by Mileta Ojdanić, who appears to have used bank accounts being scrutined for links to Russian money.

Montenegro’s High Court confirmed an indictment against Ojdanić in 2024: prosecutors accuse him of organising a criminal network that trafficked some 4.3 tonnes of cocaine from South America into Europe and laundered around €7 million. A bank used by his company, Adriatic Bank, has separately been swept up in Montenegrin police and regulatory scrutiny over Russian-linked money.

Private Family Office’s own accounts show an accumulated deficit that grew from roughly €79,000 in 2020 to €465,638 in 2025, on near-zero revenue and a single employee, kept afloat by more than €400,000 in loans from unidentifiable sources, first reported by Byline Times. Cottrell’s lawyers have said only that the loans and the company’s lack of revenue are unsurprising, since it was established for “administrative functions.”

Byline Times previously revealed that Cottrell entered the corporate finance world under a false Swiss identity, hired by the same City network that later produced Reform UK’s own treasurer, Mehrtash A’zami. Byline Times has since confirmed that this identity was stolen from a real person – Cottrell’s old school friend – and that the senior accountant who had hired Cottrell years later under that false identity had no way of knowing about the past friend.

The second traced how the accountancy network tied to both Cottrell and former Reform UK treasurer Mehrtash A’zami has a Moscow partner tied to sanctioned Russian oligarchs. It also revealed that Artemon, and a sister Tivat firm, Vegaplus, serve clients that include a Belgrade arms dealer marketing Russian-designed weapons, and individuals linked to Russian state enterprises.

Artemon is the registered corporate contact for two of Ojdanić’s companies, Ruža Co and his gambling firm, Džoker – pointing to the company’s corporate administration of both.

On 22 September 2021, a government filing seen by Byline Times confirms that Artemon became a joint investor in Ruža Co, whose ownership is split 51% to Mileta Ojdanić and 49% to Milica Ojdanić.

The joint-investor role was confirmed again a year later. Artemon is also the corporate service provider for Ojdanic’s gambling company Džoker, a betting venue and lounge in Kotor, Montenegro.

Montenegrins call it the “police cartel” because prosecutors allege serving and former officers supplied the network with information and protection, and name Ojdanić as one of its organisers. 

Court documents and Montenegrin press reporting describe it as part of the Kavač clan, one of the country’s two largest organised-crime networks.

Messages that the Montenegrin outlet Vijesti attributes to Ojdanić, sent over the Sky ECC encrypted network – a messaging platform used by organised crime groups until European police cracked its encryption in 2021 – show him discussing million-dollar sums moved into Montenegro and unexplained “tokens”, one of which he valued at $1 million. It’s unclear whether “tokens” referred to cryptocurrency. 

In July 2026, prosecutors opened a fresh money-laundering investigation into Ojdanić over an alleged further €1 million.

The Kavač clan, named for a district near Kotor, split from a single Montenegrin cocaine-trafficking organisation in 2014 after roughly 200kg of the drug went missing from a stash house in Spain. 

The resulting war with the rival faction, the Škaljari clan, has killed more than 70 people across Europe and South America. Montenegro’s own 2021 organised-crime threat assessment names Kavač and Škaljari as the country’s two most powerful criminal groups, running cocaine from Ecuador into Europe through ports including Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg. 

The network in which Ojdanić is charged – 21 people, including serving and former police officers, accused of smuggling some 4.3 tonnes of cocaine and laundering around €7 million – was built on evidence Europol supplied from intercepted Sky ECC messages.

Two of Ruža Co’s four bank accounts sit at Adriatic Bank, ultimately owned by Alex Shnaider, a Russian-Canadian businessman, through a Delaware company, Adriatic Capital LLC. In December 2024, Montenegro’s Special Police Department seized part of the bank’s documentation while examining clients with prior business ties to Russia. Montenegro’s Central Bank has also ordered Adriatic Bank to pay €3.6 million over anti-money-laundering failings – a decision the bank is contesting.

Payments by Fiona Cottrell, George Cottrell’s mother, to Reform UK and Britain Means Business – Reform deputy leader Richard Tice’s private fundraising vehicle – are now the subject of criminal investigations by the Metropolitan Police and the National Crime Agency, which has been unable to trace the money’s ultimate source and is now seeking help from a foreign partner.

Montenegro’s small accountancy sector has repeatedly featured in the country’s largest money-laundering cases, because firms administering client companies can process transactions without independently verifying where the underlying money originated. That exposure does not require intent: an accountancy can facilitate laundering unwittingly, simply by handling a client’s transactions in good faith without ever establishing the source of the funds behind them.

Nada Babovic, Artemon’s founder, told Byline Times:

“As part of the company incorporation process, it is standard administrative practice for newly established companies to initially use Artemon’s contact details, including our email address and registered business address, in order to ensure the proper receipt of official correspondence and communication with the competent public authorities during the registration process and the initial period of operation. Thereafter, it is the responsibility of each company to update its own contact details in the relevant public registers. The fact that certain contact details may remain recorded in public registers does not constitute evidence that Artemon continues to participate in the management or business activities of that company.

Artemon does not participate in the management of its clients’ businesses, does not make their commercial or investment decisions, and is not involved in their commercial activities. Our role is strictly limited to providing professional services in accordance with the applicable laws and regulations.”

She did not clarify, however, whether Artemon continued to provide services to one the country’s largest indicted cocaine traffickers, nor why the company has joined him as a co-investor in a property development.

The G7’s Financial Action Task Force has found that accountants, lawyers and company-service providers are routinely used to create legal entities, bank accounts and ownership structures – sometimes unwittingly, sometimes knowingly. Their services can obscure beneficial ownership even without the professional’s awareness of any underlying criminality. 

A December 2023 assessment by MONEYVAL, the Council of Europe’s anti-money-laundering evaluation body, found that Montenegro allowed company formation, directorship and accounting services to operate without registration or authorisation, and classified company-service providers as high to medium-high risk for money laundering. Beneficial-ownership checks relied heavily on self-declaration, with weak verification and no effective sanctions for failures – significant given that the beneficial owner, not the company on paper, is the person who actually controls or benefits from an asset.

Montenegro has since improved on 12 of MONEYVAL’s recommendations, in a follow-up report published in January 2026. But transparency of companies and legal arrangements, and supervision of accountants, lawyers and company-service providers, remained rated “partially compliant”. The pattern reflects structural and regulatory weaknesses across the sector.

These are weakness that do not, it appears, to be of any concern to George Cottrell, whose lawyers told Byline Times:

“This is just the latest attempt to connect him, and by association apparently Reform UK, to matters that, on your own account have nothing whatsoever to do with him. There plainly can be no public interest in spuriously connecting our client with accusations apparently made against another person. There is no connection, and none of the matters cited in your email even if true ( our client has no idea if the facts are accurately stated or not) demonstrate ANY connection that would justify reporting it.

As we have said, our client understands Artemon to be one of the largest and most widely-used corporate service providers in Montenegro, and it is therefore entirely unremarkable that Private Family Office should have used Artemon. You say you do not allege wrongdoing by Artemon, so that should be the end of it.”