Reform UK, the first British political party to accept donations in crypto<\/a>, did not respond to a request for comment. Harborne\u2019s lawyers said that accusing an investor in Tether of complicity in crimes perpetrated by users of its tokens would be \u201cakin to claiming the US Treasury is an accomplice in money laundering because it prints the US dollar\u201d.<\/p>\n While there is no suggestion that Harborne himself is implicated in the money-laundering scheme, some of his fortune appears to have come from a company whose cryptocurrency is in high demand from illicit networks such as the Russian ones unearthed by the NCA\u2019s Operation Destabilise.<\/p>\n Unlike volatile cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, Tether\u2019s tokens are stablecoins, whose value is pegged to the dollar, making them easier to exchange for real currencies. Buyers of newly minted Tether stablecoins \u2013 called USDT \u2013 pay one dollar for each. Tether holds this cash to maintain the stablecoin\u2019s peg, and makes money from the interest or investment return on it. About 184bn USDT are in circulation<\/a>.<\/p>\n A Tether representative said the company \u201cunequivocally condemns the illegal use of stablecoins and is fully committed to combating illicit activity\u201d.<\/p>\n Quick GuideContact Tom Burgis about this storyShow If you have something to share on this subject you can contact Tom using one of the following methods.<\/p>\n Email (not secure)<\/p>\n If you don’t need a high level of security or confidentiality you can email tom.burgis@theguardian.com.<\/p>\n Secure Messaging in the Guardian app<\/p>\n The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories. Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs. This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said.<\/p>\n If you don’t already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS<\/a>\/Android<\/a>) and go to the menu. Select \u2018Secure Messaging\u2019.<\/p>\n To send a message to Tom please choose the \u2018UK Investigations\u2019 team.<\/p>\n SecureDrop and other secure methods<\/p>\n If you can safely use the tor network without being observed or monitored you can send messages and documents to the Guardian via our SecureDrop platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n Finally, our guide at theguardian.com\/tips<\/a>\u00a0lists several ways to contact us securely, and discusses the pros and cons of each.\u00a0<\/p>\n Illustration: Guardian Design \/ Rich Cousins<\/p>\n Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n \u201cTether tokens are often acquired and circulated through secondary markets and peer-to-peer platforms. These flows are not controlled by Tether but we remain vigilant and ready to act when law enforcement identifies illicit activity,\u201d the spokesperson added.<\/p>\n But crypto experts say all demand \u2013 including illicit demand \u2013 benefits the company by driving up the cash reserves from which Tether makes its billions in profit.<\/p>\n Harborne, a former McKinsey consultant, is not an executive at Tether. He also has interests<\/a> in aviation fuel, military contractors and a wellness centre in Thailand, where he lives, going by British and Thai names. He describes himself as an \u201cintensely private person\u201d.<\/p>\n As well as helping Farage and his parties, Harborne has given money to the Conservatives and donated \u00a31m to Boris Johnson when he left Downing Street in 2022. The Guardian revealed that after the donation Harborne accompanied Johnson on a visit to Ukraine<\/a>. Neither has said why.<\/p>\n Johnson did not respond to a request for comment. A Tory spokesperson said: \u201cAll donations to the Conservative party are accepted in good faith and only after thorough due diligence to ensure they come from permissible sources. We take our legal and compliance responsibilities extremely seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n NCA investigators say cryptocurrency has \u201cturbocharged\u201d money laundering, with the Russian laundering scheme switching to Tether shortly before 2020.<\/p>\n Sal Melki, the NCA\u2019s deputy director of economic crime, said: \u201cA line can be drawn from this money-laundering scheme to support for companies involved in the Russian military-industrial base.\u201d<\/p>\n The NCA launched Operation Destabilise in 2021 when it rumbled a ransomware gang whose proceeds were being laundered by a Russian socialite. Working with their US, French and Irish counterparts, investigators established that the laundering network, known as Smart, and another, called TGR, were shifting billions of pounds.<\/p>\n The NCA\u2019s investigators believe the TGR network has \u201csupported companies involved in the Russian military-industrial base\u201d. It has, they say, \u201cfacilitated the export of electronic components to Russia\u201d.<\/p>\n Western countries have imposed sanctions seeking to restrict the Putin regime\u2019s access to computer chips and other hard-to-find components for drones and missiles, yet the weapons continue to rain down on Ukraine. Ukraine\u2019s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said<\/a> in October that the weapons systems Russia used in a single day of deadly air attacks contained more than 100,000 foreign-made parts, including British microcomputers.<\/p>\n NCA investigators say Russian intelligence agents tried to fund a spy ring of six Bulgarians it was running in the UK via the Smart laundering network. The espionage included hunting an investigative journalist who had helped implicate Russian spies in the poisoning of the opposition politician Alexei Navalny. The Bulgarians were jailed<\/a> in May after an Old Bailey trial.<\/p>\n The networks have also helped rich Russians in the west access cash \u2013 as much as \u00a3100,000 a time \u2013 to maintain the lifestyles to which they are accustomed despite sanctions, the investigators say.<\/p>\n The NCA has little hold over Tether, a spectacularly profitable venture in a largely unregulated industry based in a Central American dictatorship.<\/p>\n Melki said: \u201cWe work with any global crypto firm that wants to work with us, in addition to those regulated in the UK, but there\u2019s no free pass for crypto firms. They all have a role to play in limiting their exposure to bad actors.\u201d<\/p>\n The Tether representative said it had \u201ca proven track record as the industry leader in working with global law enforcement to stop bad actors\u201d.<\/p>\n The company has frozen or blocked more than $3.4bn in USDT in collaboration with more than 300 agencies in 62 countries, the representative added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A cryptocurrency backed by one of Nigel Farage\u2019s biggest donors has been used to help Russia fight its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-275042","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1763712250_199_4000.jpg\")
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