LONDON: Billionaire investor George Soros has donated £400,000 to a campaign for influencing British lawmakers to vote against a final Brexit deal, its director said Thursday amid accusations of a “plot to thwart Brexit”.

“Through his foundations he has contributed £400,000 (453,000 euros, $555,000),” said former minister Mark Malloch-Brown, chairman of Best for Britain, which advocates for the country to remain in the EU.

The Daily Telegraph, a staunchly pro-Brexit newspaper, said Soros’s “campaign to overturn Brexit” was planning nationwide adverts this month “which they hope will lead to a second referendum to keep Britain in the EU.”

But Malloch-Brown defended the campaign, saying it was “perfectly reasonable” that Members of Parliament should have a chance to think again about going ahead with Brexit.

“There are a lot of people out there who are frustrated,” he told BBC radio, adding: “A majority of MPs are still personally Remainers and yet are about to vote for anything between a hard and a soft Brexit.”

Soros, 87, a US financier and philanthropist, is a favourite bete noire of nationalists around the globe from the Kremlin to his native Hungary.

He is a hate figure in Britain for making a billion dollars betting against sterling on Black Wednesday in 1992 when Britain was forced to withdraw the pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.—AFP