A former aide to Nigel Farage who was arrested on money-laundering charges last year gave US federal agents “information” as part of a plea agreement that sharply reduced his possible prison sentence from a maximum of 20 years to eight months, according to court documents.

George Cottrell, a Briton who was arrested in the US last summer after attending the Republican National Convention with Farage, the former Ukip leader, received a sentence that was on the low end of the sentencing guidelines used to determine such cases even though the Arizona prosecutors in his case said they had evidence that showed Cottrell had shown “clear intent” to engage in criminal activity in the past.

A court document filed by the prosecutors in February – which has not previously been reported in detail – advised the judge in the case to offer Cottrell a light prison sentence because he had been willing to “provide federal agents additional information after his arrest”.

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The nature of the information Cottrell provided to federal agents is not spelled out in the court documents. But the documents state that the 23-year-old, who is living in the UK, provided federal agents with “additional information about his role in the offence and how he became involved”. It also suggests he could be called to testify about his statements in the future and that additional information about the plea may be under seal and unavailable to the public.

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The final plea concluded that investigators were ultimately unable to confirm whether Cottrell really was a professional money launderer who had committed crimes before the one to which he pleaded guilty, but that he had the experience given previous work in the financial industry, and the “predisposition”, given his use of dark web marketing, to commit crime.

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