Tether and Bitfinex shareholder Christopher Harborne has donated £9 million ($12 million) to Nigel Farage’s right-wing party Reform UK, making the crypto investor’s political donation one of the biggest in UK history.
Reform UK also received a £50,0000 donation earlier this year from Viscountess Rothermere, the wife of the owner of the UK’s largest news outlet, the Daily Mail, a £500,000 donation from a high-profile property developer, and £100,000 from an investment firm founder.
According to DonationsWatch, Harborne has spent almost £21 million ($28 million) on political party donations and Reform UK (formerly known as the Brexit Party), has received £19.1 million of these funds.
The Conservatives have received over £1.6 million from Harborne.
Read more: Christopher Harborne, Bitfinex shareholder, sues Wall Street Journal
The only donation larger than Harborne’s was from the late John Davan Sainsbury, who donated £10 million to the Conservatives in his 2023 will.
Farage attacks Bank of England after backing by Harborne
Byline Times reports that Harborne’s donation was made in August. One month later, Farage appeared on UK talkshow LBC, where he expressed his support for multi-billion dollar stablecoin firm Tether, and criticized the Bank of England over its proposed stablecoin restrictions.
Farage told LBC, “The Governor of the Bank of England earlier this week indicated that nobody, no individual, should be allowed to have more than £10,000 pounds worth of stablecoins, to which some of my friends have said, ‘should we just emigrate’?”
Byline Times noted that Farage didn’t make any financial disclosures during his LBC appearance about Harborne, or these “friends.”
Read more: Bitfinex, Tether shareholder paid $40K for Farage to visit Trump after rally shooting
Harborne, who also goes by the Thai name Chakrit Sakunkrit, has previously donated directly to Farage so that the politician could attend Donald Trump’s inauguration.
His son, William Harborne, is also the CEO of Rhino.fi, a stablecoin infrastructure firm that partnered with Tether last year. Rhino.fi was previously called Ethfinex and was a sister firm to Bitfinex and Tether before it was spun-out.
Farage aide linked to gambling syndicate
This week, one of Farage’s closest unpaid aids, George Cottrell, was allegedly linked to a gambling syndicate run by billionaire gambler Tony Bloom.
High court documents accused Cottrell of acting as a front for the syndicate and letting it gamble through betting accounts in Cottrell’s name.
Read more: Nigel Farage said shady alleged crypto ATM owner is ‘like a son to me’
Cottrell worked with Farage while he was active in UKIP, a far-right UK political party, and was convicted of wire fraud in 2016.
Based on evidence revealed during the investigation, Cottrell allegedly tried to launder £120,000 a month in drug trafficking proceeds.
Cottrell’s mother, Fiona Cottrell, has also donated £750,000 to Reform UK since 2024.
As part of its pro-crypto image, Reform UK began to accept crypto donations this year. However, this week, it was revealed that the UK’s Labour government is planning to ban crypto political donations.
This is due to heightened concerns about crypto’s opaque nature, making it hard to verify the individuals behind a donation and thus opening the process up to potential foreign interference.
