If you happen to be a Kremlin-linked oligarch, say, or a Hollywood A-lister or even just a common-or-garden billionaire, then chances are you’ve docked your superyacht in the swanky resort of Porto Montenegro.
Too many to count, these floating palaces, framed by soaring mountains, preen in a vast marina said to be the finest in the Mediterranean.
Every so often, small motorboats whisk their owners and guests to a wooden jetty from where, once disgorged, they stroll along a wide path, past giant palm trees flown in from Uruguay and fountains made from Venezuelan stone.
A catwalk, if you like, for the ultra-rich.
At the end of it is the Regent Hotel. Built in 2014, it is reminiscent of an Italian palazzo, a nod to the country’s past rulers, and features colonnaded balconies and even a clock tower.
Should any of these billionaires chance to look up, they might just catch a glimpse of baby-faced British aristocrat George Cottrell looking down on them, surveying all before him from the terrace of his penthouse apartment on the Regent’s fifth floor.
‘Everyone knows George,’ says a waiter in a nearby restaurant. ‘He’s a Mr Big around here.’
Friends here say he never tires of the view, and it is easy to understand why.
George Cottrell (right), pictured with Nigel Farage (left) on the day the UK voted to leave the EU, has a penthouse apartment overlooking the swanky Porto Montenegro resort
The coast, where green mountainsides plunge into cerulean water, is one of the most spectacular in the Mediterranean, and was once extolled by Lord Byron as ‘the most beautiful encounter between the land and the sea’.
Not that it was the scenery that first attracted 32-year-old George, grandson of the 3rd Baron Manton, to Montenegro. He came to make money.
Earlier this month, though, he got himself – or rather his close pal Nigel Farage – in a spot of bother after it was claimed he secretly bankrolled the Reform UK leader ahead of the general election.
He’s not the only one. Crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, who, like George, has registered a company in Montenegro, gave £9 million to Reform and £5 million to Mr Farage personally, triggering a parliamentary investigation.
Admittedly George’s largesse wasn’t quite on the same scale. He reportedly paid for security, drivers and staff for the politician. And he let Farage stay in his townhouse near Buckingham Palace.
What makes his generosity embarrassing is that George – or ‘Posh George’ as he is known – is a convicted criminal who was jailed, aged 23, for participating in a US money-laundering conspiracy.
Asked by a judge in Phoenix, Arizona, how he would ‘sustain himself economically’ on his release from jail, George said he didn’t have ‘any employment opportunities’ but planned to do ‘some pro bono work while I’m completing my education’.
Porto Montenegro attracts the ‘screamingly nouveau riche’, a visitor tells Ian Gallagher
The millionaire, who was born in London and kicked out of boarding school in Worcestershire for illegal gambling, appears to have done neither.
No sooner had he ditched his prison-issue orange jumpsuit in 2017 than he was bound for Montenegro.
But why the Balkan nation long bedevilled by corruption and crime, sandwiched between Croatia and Albania on the Adriatic coast? And just how did George build an estimated £150 million to £200 million fortune?
Many say the answer lies in the crypto industry. George says otherwise, denying claims from Montenegrin government officials that he is linked to crypto businesses.
Specifically, The Sunday Times claimed he was a ‘key player’ in Tether.bet, an online bookmaker and casino offering users large stakes on sports and politics in cash or cryptocurrency.
This included Tether, a digital currency part owned by Farage donor Mr Harborne, who is also a friend of George’s.
George’s lawyers insist he has no interest or involvement in Tether.bet.
George was also forced to fend off claims from a former justice minister that he secretly financed the election campaign of Montenegro’s prime minister, Milojko Spajic.
Once again, his lawyers hit back, arguing that he was barred from making donations due to his citizenship and saying the allegations were part of a politically motivated disinformation campaign.
George himself goes further, blaming anonymous social media accounts using AI tools for spreading ‘extreme lies’ amounting to ‘defamation on a massive scale’.
Whispers and stories about ‘suspicious business deals with gangsters and despots fall apart under investigation,’ he says.
George lived in an apartment at the Regent hotel similar to that pictured, which was privately-owned and managed by the five-star company
George’s apartment, which may have featured a swanky bathroom like that pictured elsewhere in the building, was on the fifth floor of the Regent and included a terrace
Writing for a Montenegrin news website last year, he adds: ‘There have been farcical accusations of illegal political financing here in Montenegro, a country where I have lived for years and where I have contributed to the growing economic success of this beautiful nation.’
Quite how, he doesn’t say. He simply describes himself in the article as a ‘well-known political consultant’.
Now, though, a source close to George has come forward with what he says is an explanation of how he keeps a roof over his head at the Regent.
He says George uses a system – ‘which isn’t illegal’ – which allows professional gamblers to place bets in other people’s names.
‘It allows them to circumvent restrictions that bookmakers often place on professional gamblers like George,’ they said.
‘If they win too much, the bookmakers shut down people like George. But if they use someone else’s identity they have no way of knowing the bet is from a professional gambler.’
Two years ago, it was claimed that George lost a staggering £16 million in a private high-stakes poker game over a single night in Montenegro.
Whether true or not, another source added: ‘At his heart, that’s what George is – a gambler.’
Maybe, but it’s unlikely to stop the rumours. ‘Everything he gets involved with is viewed through a lens of suspicion,’ says a lawyer based in the capital Podgorica.
‘He was said to have invested in a football club, for instance, that later became involved in match fixing.
‘I heard that what came from George wasn’t a big investment, just modest sponsorship money and that the club’s problems were absolutely nothing to do with him.
‘Look, he’s a controversial guy but not everything he touches is questionable, far from it.’
The club is FK Arsenal Tivat, whose humble ground is a three-minute walk from the Regent Hotel.
When The Mail on Sunday visited last week the few staff on duty said they ‘knew George lived at the Regent’ but weren’t aware of any financial support.
In July last year, the club was barred from European competitions for ten years – later reduced to seven – for match-fixing and fined €500,000 (£425,000). A player and a referee were banned from the game for life.
George with his ex-girlfriend Andjela Vukadinovic, who was Miss Montenegro in 2023
A former Montenegrin football star told us: ‘There was a story about him supporting the club but as I understood it, he pulled back after the ban.’
A decade before George’s arrival, Porto Montenegro was talked of as the Monaco of the Adriatic.
Novelist William Somerset Maugham famously described the French Riviera, where he lived from the 1920s, as a ‘sunny place for shady people’.
The same might be said of the beautiful Montenegrin coastline.
But where Somerset Maugham’s contemporaries were an eclectic mix of bohemians, tax exiles, playboys, spies and swindlers, their modern-day counterparts in Montenegro are often money launderers, oligarchs, metals magnates, hedge fund managers and people, like George, who may be said to be running from their past.
With low taxes, a start-up-friendly business climate and strategic location, it’s less about decadent allure than lucre, quite a bit of it filthy.
Meanwhile, Mr Farage, who was photographed drinking champagne with George at a polo match here in 2019, wants to kick-start a crypto revolution in the UK under Reform, and in Montenegro, prime minister Spajic is already ahead of him.
He hopes trading cryptocurrencies could account for a third of Montenegro’s economic output.
It is hard not to envisage Posh George being part of it somehow. As the waiter noted, he’s an influential figure in Porto Montenegro, part of charming Tivat, whose older residents complain that their town’s soul was sacrificed for the glitzy marina.
All the facilities, shops and restaurants around George’s eyrie at the Regent are linked by pristine pedestrianised streets. It feels sterile, like a Slavic-style out-of-town designer shopping village.
That wasn’t the idea when the resort was conceived.
Its main investors were Canadian gold mining billionaire Peter Munk, Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch, and Nat Rothschild, the scion of the banking dynasty, who wanted to bring the bohemian spirit of Notting Hill to the place.
The hope was that independent boutiques would likely attract a younger and more discerning clientele.
George was with Farage in June 2024 when the Reform UK leader had a milkshake thrown over him in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex (pictured)
Heidi Klein, a designer swimwear specialist, was one of the first to take up a lease here.
Old Etonian Mr Rothschild also held a lavish 40th birthday party at the resort in 2011.
Doubtless there were more than a few shady people among his 400 guests. Peter Mandelson to name just one.
Perhaps Posh George, then 18, read about Nat’s £1million bash at the time. Either way, a few years later he was here himself.
A business source in Tivat said: ‘He wasted no time schmoozing politicians and businessmen, anyone he thought might be able to help him. He seemed to be everywhere and with all the right people.’
In 2023, he ditched on-off girlfriend Georgia Toffolo, winner of I’m A Celebrity, for that year’s reigning Miss Montenegro, Andjela Vukadinovic.
Sources told the MoS last week that George now has a new girlfriend, but one he’s keen to keep under wraps – perhaps because her father is rumoured to be a Reform donor.
The blossoming romance might account for him spending less time in Montenegro.
Friends and associates told us he ‘hadn’t been around all season’. But a source at the Regent said he was here three weeks ago.
At one of the waterfront seafood restaurants on Thursday lunchtime, a waiter reports that George is ‘friendly and generous with tips’.
As we speak, another superyacht glides into the harbour. It’s the Black Pearl, owned by the family of Russian oligarch Oleg Burlakov, who died from Covid in 2021, three years after surviving an assassination attempt.
George pictured holding a cigarette while dining with Farage in 2024 ahead of the last general election
Nearby, Roman Abramovich’s old yacht, Pelorus, which has two helicopter decks and is now owned by a Hong Kong property billionaire, berths next to the £225million Kaos, owned by Walmart heir Nancy Walton Laurie.
Back in the restaurant, the only other diner, Anglo-Austrian Juliana, tells me she arrived in Porto Montenegro with her husband that morning by yacht, ‘most definitely not a superyacht though’.
While she loves Montenegro, she finds the marina development ‘soulless’. She hasn’t heard of George but questions why anyone would want to live here.
‘It’s screamingly nouveau riche,’ she says. ‘If you had any class you’d find somewhere quiet nearby.’
Maybe. But George is young and likes to be at the heart of the action.
Just a brief waterfront stroll from the Regent is one of his favourite haunts, Salon Privé, a casino. Shaped like a superyacht, it is lined with palm trees and bears a sign declaring: ‘What happens here, stays here.’
Inside, hostesses check passports before members can access the slot machines and a VIP room.
When I visited last week, it was all but empty. A lone customer, an Australian, played blackjack on screen with a virtual croupier as 1980s disco blared from speakers.
One of the hostesses said George could often be found on the rooftop bar holding court ‘but not tonight’.
It was from this casino – owned by an associate of George’s – that the Montenegrin government confiscated a cash machine offering cryptocurrency in June 2023.
Aleksandar Damjanovic, the then finance minister, told local press after the raid that the machine was ‘linked to Cottrell’.
George’s lawyers deny he had any involvement with ‘any crypto ATM machine at Salon Privé’.
George walked ahead of Farage at the L’Escargot restaurant in London in 2020 for the unveiling of a portrait of the then-Brexit Party leader entitled Mr Brexit
There are no legal crypto ATMs in Britain, as the Financial Conduct Authority has warned that the machines are often used to facilitate money laundering.
Opposite the casino, a magnolia-lined street leads to a post office. Behind it, hidden like a dirty secret, is a scruffy building containing a lawyer’s office.
A source says the address is linked to some of George’s business friends. Nobody answers when we call.
But it transpires Mr Harborne and other Reform-linked figures, including board member Gawain Towler and former treasurer Mehrtash A’zami, who once ran a British crypto company, all have firms registered here.
Towler, a former communications chief for Farage, said he and other Reform associates were interested in Montenegro because it was ‘beautiful’ and ‘cheap’.
Of course. Who could possibly think otherwise?
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