{"id":767854,"date":"2026-09-12T01:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T01:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/767854\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T01:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T01:26:10","slug":"reform-receives-record-36m-donation-from-cryptocurrency-billionaire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/767854\/","title":{"rendered":"Reform receives record \u00a336m donation from cryptocurrency billionaire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reform’s fundraising has been under scrutiny with police announcing an investigation<\/a> over allegations it broke foreign funding laws, following a broadcast by Channel 4 News last week.<\/p>\n

The party denied any wrongdoing and said it would co-operate with the investigation.<\/p>\n

Farage is also under investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner over whether he should have declared a \u00a35m cash gift he received from Thailand-based cryptocurrency investor Christopher Harborne ahead of the 2024 election upon his election as an MP.<\/p>\n

Farage argues he was under no obligation to register the “purely private” gift, as it was unrelated to his parliamentary or political activities.<\/p>\n

The Metropolitan Police is also investigating whether payments to Reform in the weeks before the last election complied with donation laws.<\/p>\n

The police inquiry is looking at donations given directly to the party by Fiona Cottrell, mother of longstanding Farage ally George Cottrell.<\/p>\n

It is also examining payments from a company controlled by Reform’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, which received \u00a31m from Fiona Cottrell in June 2024.<\/p>\n

The restrictions on donations from Britons living abroad prompted a furious row with Reform and its key donors, who have accused Labour of trying to stymie their party’s progress.<\/p>\n

The government has also sought to prevent overseas voters moving to the UK from giving more than \u00a3100,000 for a year after their arrival as part of the Representation of the People Bill, which has its second reading in the Lords on Monday.<\/p>\n

Last year Harborne gave a single donation of \u00a39m to Reform<\/a> – which was the biggest single donation to a UK political party by a living person at the time.<\/p>\n

The Conservatives had received \u00a310m as a legacy but that too has been eclipsed by Delo’s latest donation.<\/p>\n

Responding to the donation, a Labour Party spokesperson said Farage was “still up to his neck in scandal” and “the questions he faces aren’t going away – in fact they’re piling up”.<\/p>\n

“Reform UK can’t buy their way out of questions about sleaze, criminal mates and dodgy finances,” they said. “It’s time Farage and Reform finally came clean with the public, co-operated fully with the police, and proved they’re not just in it for themselves.”<\/p>\n

Liberal Democrat Cabinet Office spokesperson Lisa Smart said Farage wanted to “bring Trump’s America to our shores by buying his way into power”. <\/p>\n

“He’s trying to get into Number 10 as if it’s a stop on a monopoly board,” the Liberal Democrat added. “It can’t go on like this. Andy Burnham needs to introduce a cap on political donations. Our democracy depends on it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reform’s fundraising has been under scrutiny with police announcing an investigation over allegations it broke foreign funding laws,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-767854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767854","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=767854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}