A millionaire-funded financial infrastructure propping up Australian neo-nazi leader Thomas Sewell has been uncovered in an investigation by Australian newspapers and anti-fascists.
The investigation, by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, together with the anti-fascist White Rose Society, has revealed the names of a group of wealthy individuals who have been quietly bankrolling Australia’s neo-nazi movement.
Sewell, currently on bail facing charges including violent disorder and assault arising from last August’s attack on a First Nations sacred site in Melbourne, was found secretly living in a sprawling £1.2 million estate in Melbourne’s north-east.
Gifted to nazis
The property, more than 19 acres with over ten bedrooms, a pool, gym and panoramic city views, does not appear in Sewell’s name. It was purchased through a shell company by Martin Featherstone, the heir to a Melbourne trucking empire, who jointly owns the company with his elderly mother.
According to Sewell, it has been gifted to the nazi network he controls.
Featherstone, privately educated and financially independent, describes himself online as a “white nationalist” and “racist.”
He has been photographed repeatedly alongside Sewell and other NSN members, including at the group’s final training session in January, where he was identified wearing a white wristband denoting long-term membership.
In leaked NSN chat logs, Featherstone participated in discussions advocating violence against ethnic minorities.
He is also the owner of a separate £1.7 million mansion minutes from the compound.
Documents filed in the High Court, where Sewell is mounting a well-funded challenge to Australia’s new hate speech legislation, confirm that White Australia, which Sewell planned would replace the banned NSN, had listed the Featherstone mansion as its registered headquarters.
Legal shell
White Australia has itself now been swept up in the government’s proscription order, banned alongside the NSN following its transparent attempt to serve as a legal shell for the same personnel and infrastructure.
Sewell’s announcement in January that NSN was disbanding was viewed by the government as a pretence rather than a genuine stand-down.
Featherstone is not alone among Sewell’s moneyed associates.
Yassin Albarri, a 26-year-old racing driver and pilot who owns a cargo airline and twice stood as a candidate for Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party, helped organise Sewell’s March for Australia rallies last August.
Combat 18
He has since launched a company, Rosetta Entertainment, in partnership with NSN member Jake Crockett, who faces charges over the Camp Sovereignty attack.
Albarri has been photographed at NSN events alongside figures including a former member of the proscribed terrorist group Combat 18.
David Roberts is the son of a gun dealer and pilot and holds significant family wealth, including a 300-acre Victorian estate and aircraft.
Roberts has appeared alongside Sewell at key NSN events over the past year, incuding hiking trips, marches and the group’s final training session in January, identifiable by a distinctive white hat he regularly wears.
Manosphere
Behind the scenes, money has also been flowing in from the fringes of the online “manosphere.”
Stirling Cooper, real name Nigel Clifford, is an Australian pharmacy graduate turned sex coach and penis supplement entrepreneur with close ties to Andrew Tate, on whose private jets and at whose parties he is often present.
Cooper was a regular at neo-Nazi training sessions in Perth as well as national events. Corporate records show he registered the NSN’s original White Australia political website using his real name, through shell companies he set up.
Sources inside the movement are reported as saying that Cooper has also made significant financial gifts to NSN members.
American conservatives
Completing the picture of Sewell’s social and financial backers are Hugo Lennon, scion of a major property development dynasty, who has been publicly positioning Sewell to American conservative networks, and Mitchell Hobbs, a Melbourne stockbroker who operates online under the name “Sir Doug.”
Both attended the Conservative Political Action Conference in Texas in March, mixing with former Proud Boys leadership and figures associated with American accelerationist publishing.
Hobbs acknowledges attending NSN training but claims he went as a political commentator.
The financial scale involved is considerable. International far-right networks helped Sewell raise over £75,000 in a matter of days earlier this year to fund his High Court challenge.
A separate £25,000 was reportedly embezzled from NSN funds in 2024 and went unnoticed for months indicating the volume of money passing through the organisation.
