Christopher Harborne gave Reform UK £3 million in November 2025.
Three months earlier he had given it £9 million, then the largest single donation from a living person to a British political party.
He gave another £3 million in the first three months of this year.
Those payments came after more than £10 million of earlier donations to the Brexit Party, which later became Reform UK. The Guardian calculated in June that Harborne had given the party and its predecessor about £25 million, accounting for roughly two thirds of their funding.
There is another £5 million that does not appear in the party's donation total.
Harborne gave it personally to Nigel Farage in 2024.
The gift became public only in April this year, after the Guardian discovered it. Farage had not registered it when he entered Parliament following the July 2024 election.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards opened an investigation on 13 May into whether Farage failed to register an interest. The case is being investigated under Rule 5 of the Commons Code of Conduct. No finding has been made.
The Electoral Commission has separately been considering whether the gift falls within its own rules. In May it said it was "considering it under our regulatory remit" and would decide what, if any, further action was required. As of 1 July, it had not announced a formal investigation.
Harborne has also funded another former prime minister.
Boris Johnson's register of interests records a £1 million payment to The Office of Boris Johnson Ltd on 21 November 2022. Johnson registered it the following month. Electoral Commission correspondence shows the watchdog subsequently questioning whether the £1 million should be reported by Johnson personally or by The Office of Boris Johnson Ltd, because the money had been paid to the company rather than directly to him.
Add Harborne's donations to political parties, the £1 million given to Johnson's office and the separate £5 million given to Farage, and his disclosed or subsequently revealed funding of British political parties and political figures exceeds £30 million.
The payments are not all legally the same thing. Party donations, support for an MP's political activities and a personal gift are covered by different reporting regimes. Combining them gives a picture of the scale of Harborne's financial relationship with British politics, not a single Electoral Commission category.
Harborne was born in Britain, has lived in Thailand for more than two decades and also holds Thai citizenship. His residence abroad does not by itself make his political donations unlawful. The rules governing permissible donors have allowed eligible individuals registered to vote in the UK to make donations.
The Sunday Times Rich List estimated his wealth this year at £18.2 billion, placing him sixth on the list.
Most of that estimated fortune comes from cryptocurrency. The Rich List valued his roughly 12 per cent interest in Tether at £17.7 billion. Tether issues USDT, the world's largest stablecoin linked to the dollar. Harborne also has interests including aviation fuel businesses and a significant shareholding in the defence company QinetiQ.
That financial interest makes Reform's move into cryptocurrency policy worth examining.
Cryptocurrency barely featured in the party's 2024 election programme. Reform opposed a central bank digital currency and criticised debanking, but did not campaign on a Bitcoin reserve, a special crypto tax rate or allowing tax bills to be paid in cryptocurrency.
In May 2025, Farage travelled to the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas and launched Reform's Cryptoassets and Digital Finance Bill.
The draft proposed cutting capital gains tax on some crypto gains to 10 per cent, establishing a government Bitcoin reserve, protecting lawful crypto users from some banking restrictions and requiring HMRC to accept Bitcoin for tax payments. Reform also announced that it would accept cryptocurrency donations.
The bill subsequently disappeared from Reform's website. By late May 2026 its original PDF link no longer worked. Reform did not answer questions from investigative outlet The Nerve about why it had been removed or whether the proposals remained party policy.
Farage has also challenged Bank of England policy affecting digital currencies.
He met governor Andrew Bailey in September 2025 and argued against plans for a digital pound backed by the state. He and Zia Yusuf, then Reform's chairman, subsequently criticised the Bank's proposed £20,000 individual limit on holdings of systemic sterling stablecoins.
Harborne's stake in Tether gives him a large financial interest in the stablecoin industry. That does not establish that Reform's policies were written for him or adopted in return for donations.
There is no public evidence of such an agreement.
Harborne has said his political giving is unconditional. He told the Guardian earlier this year that he believed cryptocurrency should be regulated in Britain, but denied that his donations bought influence over Reform's policies. Farage has said Harborne has asked for nothing in exchange for his support.
Farage has also given more than one explanation for the £5 million personal gift.
When its existence became public in April, he said Harborne had given him the money because of concerns about his personal security. In May he described it as a "reward" for his decades campaigning for Brexit.
Harborne's lawyers have said the gift was unconditional, that he expected nothing in return and that he did not envisage Farage returning to frontline politics when it was made.
Farage did return.
He announced on 23 May 2024 that he would not stand in the general election, then reversed that decision on 3 June and became Reform's candidate in Clacton. He was elected the following month.
The existence of the £5 million gift does not prove it caused that decision. Reform has said the two events were entirely unrelated.
The question now before the Parliamentary Commissioner is narrower: whether, once Farage became an MP, the gift should have appeared in his register of interests.
Commons rules require newly elected MPs to register certain financial interests and benefits received during the previous 12 months when they could reasonably be thought to relate to their political or parliamentary activities. Personal gifts that cannot reasonably be regarded that way are exempt.
Farage's position is that the £5 million was a private and unconditional gift and therefore did not have to be declared.
The Commissioner has not yet decided whether that interpretation was correct.
The concentration of Harborne's funding does not require an allegation of corruption to be significant.
The Electoral Commission publishes political donations, but the £5 million payment to Farage did not appear there because it was treated by the recipient as personal rather than political.
It became public almost two years later through journalism.
Whether it should have been disclosed through the political system is now the subject of a formal parliamentary investigation.