The Lead Untangles: Nigel Farage's £5million gift from Christopher Harborne
The Reform leader has been shifting explanations about the enormous amount of money received from the crypto billionaire
Nigel Farage is facing the threat of two investigations over the undeclared seven-figure gift he received from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.
The parliamentary standards commissioner Daniel Greenberg has already opened an inquiry into the Reform UK leader after it was revealed he received £5 million from Harborne in June 2024 – weeks before he made a U-turn decision to run for parliament.
The Electoral Commission is considering whether it is opening its own inquiry into the incident.
Earlier this year the standards commissioner found that Farage had breached parliamentary rules by failing to register 17 payments worth roughly £384,000 within the 28 days required – but no action was taken as it was said the breach could “reasonably be described” as an error.
But this incident is far more serious: people familiar with standards inquiries have said it could result in suspension from Parliament and may even trigger a by-election.
What has Farage been accused of?
This week Farage threatened legal action against former Reform-politician Ben Habib who now leads the far-right party Advance UK. This is because he alleged Harborne – who was a large donor of the Brexit Party – had a “monetary deal” in 2019 to “sew up” the election.
Harborne paid Boris Johnson £1m in 2022. He also donated over £10 million to the Brexit Party in 2019. While Habib never explicitly stated that Farage was paid to rig the election, Farage said his lawyers have formally written to Habib to demand “an immediate apology and public retraction for the baseless allegations he made today”. In doing so, he amplified the allegations to 1.3 million people on X alone.
Also this week, Sky News reported that Farage’s £1.4 million property – which was bought in cash by his partner Laure Ferrari, and drew questions over tax avoidance– was bought shortly after he received Harborne’s £5 million donation.
However, a spokesperson for Reform said: “The relevant chronology is straightforward. The offer and purchase process for the property commenced before the gift.
“Mr Farage had already passed proof of funds and the relevant checks before receiving the gift. The purchase was therefore already proceeding independently of it.”
Farage initially told the Daily Telegraph that the gift was to pay for his personal security. On Thursday he told The Sun that it was an “unconditional” gift “given as a “reward for campaigning for Brexit for 27 years”.
Speaking to the Telegraph, Harborne also said he “wasn’t expecting anything in return apart from ensuring his [Mr Farage’s] safety”.
He said: “I gave him the money because of my great admiration for the decades of work he had done to achieve Brexit. He had stood down from politics and barely had any income before he went into the [I’m a Celebrity ...] jungle.”
Who is Christopher Harborne?
Harborne is a 63-year-old businessman and technology investor from Yorkshire. He now lives in Thailand where he goes by the name Chakrit Sakunkrit.
Over the past seven years, Harborne has given more than £22m to Farage’s political parties. That includes £12 million to the Brexit Party and £10m to Reform that accounts for two-thirds of all funding received by Reform UK (previously called the Brexit Party) and also included a £9m donation to Reform UK in August 2025, which was the largest single political donation ever made in the UK by a living person.
In January, he gave Farage £27,616.76 so he could attend the second inauguration of Donald Trump and paid another £32,836 for Farage and a member of staff to fly to the US following the attempted assassination of Trump in July last year.
Harborne also gave more than £266,000 to the Conservative party between 2001 and 2018.
He was an early investor in cryptocurrency and is a joint owner of Tether, the company that issues the most widely-traded cryptocurrency. When Farage was asked in December about his donations, he said, “Does he want anything from me? No. Absolutely nothing in return at all. He just happens to think that we’ve not made the most of Brexit, that we’re not getting into the 21st-century technologies.”
According to the Guardian, Harborne took a desk in the Brexit Party’s campaign headquarters, where he conducted his crypto business. Gawain Towler who was Farage’s communications chief and sits on Reform’s board said “I never heard Harborne] say, ‘And I want you to have this policy.’ Because, you’ve got to remember, the Brexit party had only one policy, and that was to have Brexit.”
What rules has Farage potentially broken?
Reform UK denies any wrongdoing and says the money was a “personal unconditional gift” unrelated to politics. However, MPs say he should have declared it in the MPs’ register of interests when he was elected to Parliament in 2024.
Following the news of Harborne’s gift, Farage was referred to the parliamentary standards commissioner by the Conservatives, which cited rules that require MPs to declare any “personal benefit” they have received in the 12 months before taking office, and to do so within a month of being elected.
Under the House of Commons code of conduct, “new MPs must register all their current financial interests, and any registrable benefits (other than earnings) received in the 12 months before their election within one month of their election”.
The rules say that “purely personal gifts or benefits” from family or commercial loans would not normally have to be registered and that “both the possible motive of the giver and the use to which the gift is to be put should be considered”, adding “if there is any doubt, the benefit should be registered”.
The Conservatives have also raised concerns about the £5m gift to Farage with the Electoral Commission, which said it was considering the information.
What comes next?
The parliamentary commissioner’s investigation is underway and the electoral commission will confirm whether it will investigate further by the end of the week.
MPs who are judged to have broken the code of conduct face a range of punishments from a written or oral apology to suspension from the House or even expulsion, in the most serious cases. ■
About the author: Ella Glover is the audience engagement editor at The Lead. She is also a freelance journalist specialising in workers’ rights, housing, health, harm reduction and lifestyle.
About The Lead Untangles: In an era where misinformation is actively and deliberately used by elected politicians and where advocates and opposers of beliefs state their point of view as fact, sometimes the most useful tool reporters have is to help readers make sense of the world. If there is something you’d like us to untangle, email ella@thelead.uk.
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It has been suggested (I think by the Wall Street Journal) that Harbourn has connections with Russia, and may be a conduit, using cryptocurrency as a means to move Russian money. There’s a lot more to this story when you scratch under the surface.
It’s good he’s being investigated but our regulators are completely toothless, which he knows. It won’t bother him in the slightest. In fact a suspension from Parliament would just give him more time for further grifts. He will be thinking “happy days”. The only thing that would bother him is for him to be arrested for fraud or to have to answer un-pre submitted questions!