So who is Nigel Farage’s £5m donor? His name is Christopher Harborne, and he’s a British-Thai crypto billionaire who spends most of his life in Thailand. He quietly slipped Farage £5m in 2024. Farage didn’t tell a soul. And now it’s blown up into the messiest saga of his career.
- Christopher Harborne, 63, is a British-Thai billionaire living in Thailand.
- He gifted Farage £5m in 2024, just before Farage stood for parliament.
- He owns around 12% of the crypto coin Tether.
- He’s the biggest single donor Reform UK has ever had.
- Bankers got twitchy and flagged the gift to the National Crime Agency.
Meet the Man With the Money
Christopher Charles Sherriff Harborne was born in December 1962 in Mosborough, Sheffield. Posh start in life, too. Westminster School, then Downing College, Cambridge, then an MBA from INSEAD. He even shares a bloodline with the writer R. C. Sherriff.
He did five years at McKinsey, then made an absolute fortune. These days he calls himself an investor in “new tech”, which mostly means crypto. He was in on Bitcoin and Ethereum early and owns roughly 12% of Tether Limited.
On the side he runs Sherriff Global Group, which floggs private planes, and AML Global, which sells aviation fuel.
And he’s rich. Properly, eye-wateringly rich. The Sunday Times Rich List 2026 put him sixth, worth £18bn. In Thailand he goes by another name entirely, Chakrit Sakunkrit. The Times once noted his name pops up in the Panama Papers as an intermediary linked to offshore accounts. Make of that what you will.
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Key Facts About the Person Funding Reform UK
Harborne has been bankrolling British politics for years. He started small, chucking the Tories around £15,000 a year from 2001, about £270,000 all in. Then in 2019 he jumped ship and handed the Brexit Party more than £6m, making him its top donor.
In 2022 he gave £1m to the Office of Boris Johnson and even advised Boris on a 2023 trip to Kyiv. In 2025 he handed Reform UK £12m, including a single £9m donation, the biggest gift a living person has ever given a British party.
Another £3m followed in March 2026. All told, his Reform donations now top £22m, roughly two-thirds of everything the party has ever raised. Let that sink in.
The Gift That Started the Fire
The Guardian broke the story back in April: Harborne had privately gifted Farage £5m in 2024. Not to the party. To the man himself.
Now, remember what Farage said at the time. On 23 May 2024 he ruled himself out of standing, saying it was “not the right time for me”. Barely a fortnight later, on 3 June, he did a full U-turn and announced he’d run in Clacton, Essex. He won that July and now says he expects to be prime minister one day.
Especially since Farage once moaned “there’s no money in politics” and admitted being “skint” in 2017. He’d even dropped below the threshold to keep his posh Coutts bank account in 2023. On 1 May 2024, he became a “person of significant control” of Reform, basically owning the party outright.
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The Bankers Got Nervous
Bankers filed a suspicious activity report (SAR) with the National Crime Agency on 16 May 2024. They simply couldn’t trace where the money came from. Banks keep a beady eye on “politically exposed persons”, and crypto cash is famously slippery to follow.
To be clear, a SAR is not proof of wrongdoing. It’s just a nudge for the agency to look closer. But it doesn’t half look bad. Harborne’s lawyers claim Farage got the cash on 5 April 2024 and dismissed the whole probe: “Your inquiry is replete with speculation and assumptions that do not appear to be grounded in any evidence.”
Farage Can’t Keep His Story Straight
And this is the bit that really raises eyebrows. Farage has offered about three different explanations. First it was for his personal security. Then it was a reward for Brexit. Then he snapped that it was “nobody’s business” and joked he could blow it on Ferraris if he fancied.
To the Telegraph, he laid it on thick: “This money was given to me so that I would be safe and secure for the rest of my life.” Harborne backed that up, saying he gave it “because of my great admiration for the decades of work he had done to achieve Brexit”.
On the crime agency stuff, Farage insisted he knew nothing about any SAR: “I have no reason to doubt the ultimate source of the money.” His deputy Richard Tice went further, accusing the NCA itself of leaking bank statements to the press.
The Byelection Stunt
He resigned his Clacton seat and forced a byelection, then stood in it himself. In a video he declared, “I have done nothing wrong. I have not broken the law in any way at all.” He billed it as “the people versus the establishment”.
Trouble is, nobody wanted to play. Labour, the Tories, the Lib Dems, the Greens and Restore Britain all refused to stand, branding it a “vanity project” and a “media circus”.
Labour chair Anna Turley called it “an astonishing and deeply serious allegation” and told him to “come clean”. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch reckoned he’d resigned because he’s “terrified”.
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What Happens Now
As the Independent flagged, there’s a second scandal brewing: undeclared help from George Cottrell, a convicted fraudster who did eight months in a US jail for wire fraud. Cottrell allegedly paid Farage’s staff and lent him a five-storey Georgian pad near Buckingham Palace.
Farage now faces two parliamentary probes led by standards commissioner Daniel Greenberg. Writing in The Conversation, a political-finance expert confirmed Farage broke no law; it’s purely about the Commons Code of Conduct, which says gifts must be declared.
If he’s suspended for more than ten days, a recall petition could trigger yet another Clacton byelection. Two byelections in one town in one year? With Nigel, you should honestly never rule it out.
Sources & References:
- The Guardian – Christopher Harborne had privately gifted Farage £5m in 2024.
- Independent – There’s a second scandal brewing: undeclared help from George Cottrell, a convicted fraudster who did eight months in a US jail for wire fraud.
- The Telegraph – Harborne said that “this money was given to me so that I would be safe and secure for the rest of my life.”
- The Conversation – A political-finance expert confirmed Farage broke no law.
