If you think you know what there is to know about far-right campaigner Tommy Robinson, think again. Born Stephen Yaxley, Robinson is known as the white nationalist agitator who co-founded the English Defence League and whose extremist anti-immigration views have attracted the praise of the likes of Elon Musk. But a Channel 4 documentary released this week by freelance documentary film-maker Matt Shea shows just how much deeper the Robinson rot goes. 

Shea’s film, which aimed to follow Robinson’s money trail – given that he has raised potentially millions of pounds from supporters and there has been, until now, little evidence of where that money ended up – revealed shocking details not only about Robinson’s potentially fraudulent financial dealings but also disturbing new information about his treatment of survivors of grooming gangs, his questionable claims about being “debanked” and even evidence that he may have committed perjury by lying under oath.

The Nerve sat down with Matt to discuss some of the most important revelations that his year-long investigation uncovered.

What did you find out in your new film, Tommy Robinson: Where’s The Money Gone? about Robinson’s donations and fundraising efforts, and where the money was coming from and ending up?

So one of the main things I sensed about Tommy Robinson is that behind him is this mass of people who are constantly donating to him. He has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds, if not millions, from his supporters, but it's very unclear what that money is spent on because most of the companies that have handled the donations that he's called for have never filed accounts. 

I went to his Unite the Kingdom rallies, and most of the people I spoke to had donated money to him. He's constantly appealing for money. And I think the most shocking revelation regarding fundraising that I think we found was about a grooming gang survivor who goes by the pseudonym “Kate” in the film.

Can you tell us more about Kate?

Kate is a survivor of one of the most notorious grooming gangs, known as the Telford grooming gang. What happened to her is so traumatic I couldn't even bear to repeat it. Robinson included her in his so-called documentary series The Rape of Britain. He initially approached her and said that he kind of tracked her down using the police database and using someone – his associate – who used to work for MI5. She was quite traumatised by him approaching her, because she had tried to hide her address after what had happened to her due to fear of reprisals from the grooming gang. 

When he tracked her down, she was suffering from PTSD and was just in a really terrible state, and he persuaded her to be in his film. Shortly after that, she was actually about to attempt suicide outside the home of one of her attackers when Tommy Robinson called her.  And he told her: don't do it... But unbeknown to her, he was recording this phone call at the time. At first she had agreed to be in the film, and he had paid her £500, but at a certain point she said she didn’t want to be in this film any more. She said: “I don't want you to identify me. I don't want you to use the phone call that you recorded without my consent.”

But then he used all of those things in this documentary, which he screened in Telford, her hometown, where these attacks happened. He screened it publicly. And that's when she first found out from the screening that the phone call was in the film, that her real name had been used. And she was furious.

On top of that, she said that she never received the funds that Tommy Robinson raised in her name. And you know, grooming gang survivors are such a central part of his message, a major reason that he often cites for people to donate to him. And to think that this grooming gang survivor who he mentions specifically during his fundraiser doesn't receive any of the money was shocking. 

And Robinson’s “fundraising” for grooming gang survivors is also part of how he connected with Elon Musk – can you tell us about that?

Yes, so for Elon Musk, the idea that Britain is this “fallen nation”, overrun by grooming gangs, and that the government's doing nothing about it, was a real draw to Tommy Robinson for him. So Robinson has clearly attracted a lot of support and wealth from these women's stories, including from Musk.

What else can you tell us about the connection between Tommy Robinson and Elon Musk?

I was shocked to see that Robinson had taken a trip to Russia, which was billed as a trip with Elon Musk’s father. But in fact it was the Musk Family Foundation that funded that trip – so there's a big question there. Why is Musk's family foundation sending a far-right British activist to get exposure to members of the Kremlin – and, while he is there, promoting content of some quite extremist neo-nazi Russian ultranationalist groups?

The other interesting thing is that when Tommy Robinson was in Russia was around the time that the [Henry Nowak trial] became a cause célèbre of the right. And Robinson filmed or shared footage of these ultra-nationalists in Russia holding a rally in memorial of this British teenager that had died. So that is bizarre, right? The idea that an ultra-nationalist Russian group is holding a rally memorial of a British teenager who was murdered is very strange.

Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, at a demonstration in Southampton about the police's involvement in Henry Nowak death, 2 June, 2026

And the Musk relationship is also crucial for Robinson’s platform because Musk restored his X account after he was suspended, right?

Yes. The thing about Musk and Robinson on X is that Musk frequently boosts Robinson's tweets by reposting them or commenting on them. And Musk generates a huge amount of traffic for Robinson on X. The things he says are carefully worded. They very carefully toe the line so that they never call for outright violence to a group of people or a person. But the comments underneath are some of the most shocking things I’ve seen. People call for a genocide of Muslims, people call for hate crimes, for the worst things you can imagine, frequently, very frequently, underneath those comments.

And for your film you also managed to speak to some really important sources who used to support Robinson but had become concerned. Can you tell us about them?

One really important source is Paul Bates. He used to work in the heart of Tommy Robinson's crowd security team in 2024 and 2025. And he became concerned that Robinson was essentially milking poor working-class people for their money and then spending it all on his family and his lifestyle.

There’s a particular case in which a man called Peter Lynch, who was a 61-year-old grandfather who who was convicted of violent disorder during the 2024 riots. And he sadly took his own life in jail.

And Robinson took up the cause and he kind of called Lynch a martyr. And while Robinson was in prison for something else, one of his key organisers at a rally appealed for donations for Lynch's family. But it was later revealed that no money appeared to have gone to Peter Lynch's family. Now, Robinson's explanation for that was that they didn't want the money for whatever reason. But ultimately Robinson’s family is the only family that benefited from this appeal, which was meant to in part go to the family of this man who died. 

In the film there’s also a brilliant interview in the film with a former director of public prosecutions, who had some very interesting things to say about the evidence that you uncovered. Can you tell us a bit about that?

So we spoke to Sir Max Hill, the former director of public prosecutions. We presented him with the evidence we had found and he said that Robinson’s failure to pass on the funds to the grooming gang survivor in our film is likely to be considered fraud, so that could lead to a criminal investigation. But not only that, there's this kind of complicated issue around when Robinson was found guilty of libelling Syrian teenager Jamal Hijazi [who lives in Huddersfield], who Robinson said had attacked English girls. He was found to have libelled him and had to pay £100,000 in damages to Hijazi. 

But Robinson claimed at the time that he couldn't pay because he didn't have enough money and he didn't have any assets. 

Robinson was asked by the high court about Lennon Consultancy Ltd, which handled donations from his supporters and was run by his ex-wife, Jenna Lennon. He was asked: what did this company do? And, under oath, he replied: “It was a company owned by my ex-wife. It's not my company, and I don't know”. 

But I was able to obtain a document that shows he was actively involved in running this company: I obtained a legal agreement signed by him on behalf of this company. We also found emails that show him kind of handling company business. And when I spoke about that to Sir Max Hill, he said this could constitute perjury and that that could be a matter for the police to investigate.

Can you tell us about Robinson’s use of the idea of him being “debanked” in his fundraising campaigns, and about how you personally tested that theory?

Absolutely. Tommy Robinson has gotten a lot of mileage out of it, because a lot of the people who I spoke to who've donated to Tommy Robinson donated to him specifically because of this notion that he is “debanked”. He claims he can’t get a bank in the UK so people donate to him in cash or in crypto. 

But I found a bank account in his name. And to prove that it was real, I sent him £1 with the reference “just checking”, and it went through successfully. So, if I can send money to a UK bank account in his name, why is he telling his supporters that no UK bank account will process payments for him? In response to that, he said the account I found is a “personal basic account” and he says “I do not have a normal current account”. I'm not quite sure what that means…

You spoke to another very powerful source who was an ex-associate of Robinson’s. Can you tell us about Lauren?

I genuinely think that Lauren Southern is one of the most inspirational people I've met because she is someone who made her entire career and her entire personality about being rightwing, criticising feminism, but then she was taken by Tommy Robinson to meet Andrew Tate in Romania. She says that she was raped by Andrew Tate [which Andrew Tate denies]. 

She’s got contemporary evidence of what she alleges, including medical evidence. And it made her completely reconsider a lot of her views about the right. She decided to go public with those allegations, knowing that it would lose her bunch of followers, knowing that it would lead to a horrific campaign of abuse, and attempts to discredit her, which goes on to this day. I mean, the abuse I get for doing this journalism is bad, but it is nothing compared to the abuse that someone like Lauren gets. And she knew that would happen, but she did it anyway. She also had the courage to kind of disavow her views that she had been espousing on social media for so long.

And she helped put a crucial piece of the puzzle into place by telling you that, in her view, he was definitely motivated by financial gain?

Yes. So she used to work with Tommy Robinson. She was young at the time, and she remembers that, you know, he spent a lot of money on partying, on drugs. She talks about how he loves Gucci and expensive cars. Ultimately, she believes from her experience with him that he's motivated hugely by money.

Tommy Robinson: Where’s The Money Gone? is available to stream on channel4.com 

Who funds Nigel Farage? The year is 2026. It’s 10 years since Farage played a pivotal role in changing Britain’s constitution and its place in the world. And the UK press has finally woken from its decade-long stupor. 

It’s the most basic of all questions: who is funding the man whose party was, until very recently, ascendant in the polls and looking like the possible next prime minister? 

Last month, I wrote about my own decade of frustration and fear, the years I spent trying to draw back the curtain on the money men behind him. That included George Cottrell, the convicted fraudster and money laundering expert who’s recently been thrust on to the national stage, even as those questions were ignored by Britain’s overwhelmingly rightwing media and I was pilloried. 

I always wondered if that would ever change. And now it has. The highly influential Murdoch press, led by the Sunday Times reporting team, is now finally on Farage’s case and it’s a game-changer. 

Farage has never known anything like it. There are now questions which even he can’t dodge. Questions even the BBC is finally asking. And his luck seems to be running out. A hasty plan to throw off a parliamentary investigation by quitting parliament before he could be sanctioned has spectacularly backfired in the biggest own goal of his career. 

It’s high summer, Farage is fighting a pointless byelection against a bin, and, still, the questions keep coming. Central to our mission at the Nerve is public interest accountability journalism, and that’s why, back in May, we threw ourselves into a new investigation, the Harborne Receipts. Today, we set out everything we’ve learned so far.

How it started

When the name of Christopher Harborne first surfaced in April, in Anna Isaac’s brilliant Guardian scoop about his five-million-quid donation to Farage, the questions came thick and fast. Who is Christopher Harborne? Why had he given Farage £5m? And what does he want?  

This is what we’ve been trying to answer over the last three months, in a series of stories that have tried to pick apart Harborne’s complex web of interests and interactions with UK politics. 

We began with a timeline: every donation Harborne has ever made to the Conservatives, the Brexit party, Farage, Boris Johnson, the Conservatives and now Reform UK. And from that we began to pattern-match, to understand the flow of money in relation to the interests of a cryptobillionaire with significant investments in defence technology. 

So far, we’ve revealed: 

• Part 1: A forensic analysis of the timing of all of Harborne’s political donations (over £30m) and how they preceded pro-crypto announcements from both Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson. 

• Part 2: Allegations of a “deal” between Farage, Johnson and Harborne to “fix” the 2019 general election. 

• Part 3: How Nigel Farage disclosed to friends that he needed to make money shortly before he began promoting crypto. 

• Part 4: An undisclosed and undeclared trip to Kyiv with Boris Johnson that Harborne paid for after he gave the ex-PM £1m. 

• Part 5: How Reform’s proposed crypto bill, launched after Farage began accepting Harborne’s donations, was quietly pulled after an investigation was launched into the £5m gift. 

• Part 6: A series of meetings between Harborne and Boris Johnson after Russia invaded Ukraine and Harborne began investing in UK military tech 

Today, we’re publishing a new master version of our investigation timeline (below). Because the devil is in the detail and the 1,000-foot view. And because, taking our cue from OSINT – open source intelligence – we’re sharing our research. 

How it’s going

There is much more to be done. But we wanted to take a moment to reflect on what we’ve learned so far. Because Harborne is still a ghost. There are few photos of him (in fact, we identified in June that Harborne was present, unsuspected, in the background of a photo widely published when Farage stood down Brexit party candidates in the 2019 election). He’s a man who has deliberately kept under the radar. But we do now know much more than we did. And if you read some of these stories, you do too. 

Brexit party leader Nigel Farage on the campaign trail in Hartlepool on the day (11 November 2019) that he announced he was standing down 317 Brexit candidates in Tory-held seats. Christopher Harborne (pink trousers) is in the background. Photograph: Ian Forsyth/Getty

My reflection from writing and co-authoring a significant chunk of these articles alongside our terrific Nerve team – Charlie Young, Lucia Osborne-Crowley and Ian Tucker – is that the UK body politic is still struggling to metabolise the extent and complexity of Farage’s financial affairs. The Sunday Times is running full pelt at the Cottrell story but it hasn’t covered his Russian connections – as we did last week – or his involvement in Brexit. And Harborne’s long involvement with Johnson and the Conservatives is an essential piece of this tale. It’s an important piece of pattern-matching but almost none of it has been reported elsewhere. 

And even where some other outlets have covered the crypto connection, it’s not in the forensic detail we’ve been able to go into here. 

Nigel Farage – rightly – is the central figure in all this. But what our reporting reveals is that it’s not just Farage. The new political money behind him is not dependent on him; it’s the other way around. If Farage vanished in a puff of intergalactic smoke, it wouldn’t matter. Harborne has repeatedly switched parties and politicians before. He could easily do so again.

And that’s why it’s critical to know who these funders are and what they want. That includes Cottrell and others, but Harborne is the biggest whale of them all. 

UK politics has changed. The amount of new money coming in is still tiny compared with US politics, but it’s not only growing fast, it’s also following the exact same playbook that saw Donald Trump, against the odds, return to power. The crypto industry donated more than $238m to pro-Trump Super PACs: more than any other individual or sector. And Harborne has donated more than £20m to Farage and his parties.

We’re keeping the receipts because Farage vs a bin isn’t a pantomime. It’s what casino capitalism enabled by new crypto tools looks like when played out against the lives of real people. 

This timeline will be updated to reflect developments in the story as they happen

2001-08

24 May 2001   

Christopher Harborne donates £10,000 to the Conservative party.  (All donation records from Electoral Commission)

13 March 2003  

Harborne donates £19,994 to the Conservative party.

8 June 2004 

Harborne donates £19,994 to the Conservative party.

28 February 2005        

Harborne donates £50,000 to the Conservative party.    

30 November 2005       

Harborne donates £400 to the Conservative party. 

19 April 2006        

Harborne donates £50,000 to the Conservative party. 

31 August 2006          

Harborne donates £8,000 to the Conservative party. 

16 September 2008 

Harborne donates £8,000 to the Conservative party. 

2018

26 January       

Harborne donates £20,000 to the Conservative party. 

Harborne donates £10,000 to the Conservative party.

Harborne donates £20,000 to the Conservative party. 

26 June   

Harborne donates £12,500 to the Conservative party.

2019

4 April     

Harborne donates £200,000 to the Brexit party. 

21 June

Harborne donates £20,000 to the Conservative party.

1 July

Harborne donates £30,000 to the Conservative party. 

9 July    

Harborne donates £1m to the Brexit party. 

23 July

Boris Johnson is elected prime minister.

23 August  

Harborne donates £1m to the Brexit party. 

28 August     

Harborne donates £1m to the Brexit party.

4 October       

Harborne donates £1m to the Brexit party. 

29 October 

Parliament votes 438-20 to call a general election on 12 December. Polling throughout October had the Brexit party on 11-12%; once the election is called it dropped into the single digits. 

31 October

During an interview on Nigel Farage’s LBC show, Donald Trump urges Farage and Johnson to team up as an “unstoppable force” in the December election. 

1 November

Farage launches the Brexit party election campaign. He says he will field 600 candidates unless Johnson drops his Brexit deal, which he says is “not Brexit”.

3 November

Farage announces he will not contest a seat himself.

Early November (exact date unclear)

According to Rupert Lowe of Restore Britain, senior Brexit party figures, including Lowe at the time, and senior Conservatives meet in Blackfriars to discuss a possible election pact. The Brexit team says the Tories must stand down candidates in Labour seats if they are to stand down candidates in Tory seats. The Tories refuse. After the meeting, the Brexit team relay the outcome to Farage. He declares they will stand in every seat. Those present at the meeting include Harborne.

6 November

Parliament is dissolved. 

Screenshot of a Guardian article from 11 November 2019, featuring a picture of Nigel Farage in Hartlepool. Christopher Harborne, fourth from left in the pink trousers, was not identified at the time – or, indeed, even known to be a Brexit party donor. (Photograph: Ian Forsyth/Getty)

13-14 November

Farage claims that he and eight senior Brexit party figures were offered peerages to withdraw.

14 November       

Harborne donates £2m to the Brexit party. 

Election nomination deadline (4pm). The Brexit party files nominations for 277 seats. 

16 November

Lord Falconer writes to the Metropolitan police and the director of public prosecutions arguing that the alleged offers of peerages and jobs constitute criminal offences. The police later decide to take no further action.

5 December        

Harborne donates £25,000 to the Brexit party. 

9 December

Harborne donates £1.425m to the Brexit party. Over the course of the final six months of 2019, he ends up donating £9.525m to the party.

10 December       

Harborne donates £25,000 to the Brexit party. 

11 December      

Harborne donates £25,000 to the Brexit party. 

12 December

The general election is held. The Conservatives win with a majority of 80. The Brexit party fails to win a seat and takes 2% of the vote.

Harborne donates £25,000 to the Brexit party.   

2020

16 January

Harborne donates £250,000 to the Brexit party. 

31 January    

The UK officially exits the EU.

10 February     

Harborne donates £25,000 to the Brexit party. 

11 February      

Harborne donates £50,000 to the Brexit party. 

12 February      

Harborne donates £40,000 to the Brexit party. 

13 February      

Harborne donates £75,000 to the Brexit party. 

14 February      

Harborne donates £25,000 to the Brexit party. 

George Cottrell, Christopher Harborne and Nigel Farage at Scott's restaurant in Mayfair, London, 6th July 2020. Photo: MJ Pictures

September (exact date unknown)

According to former Reform UK deputy leader Ben Habib and Rupert Lowe, the two had dinner with Farage at the Chelsea Arts Club. The purpose of the dinner, they claim, was to bring Farage back into frontline politics. According to Habib, “Nigel said: ‘I've done this for so long, I need to make money.’”

The Digital Currencies Governance Group (DCGG), a crypto lobbying outfit representing the stablecoin company Tether, in which Harborne has a major stake, is registered in Brussels. Harborne is officially registered as a DCGG lobbyist. 

Screengrab from a Facebook video of Farage promoting his new-found enthusiasm for crypto, December 2020. The video was an ad for Farage’s subscribers’ newsletter Fortune and Freedom.

27 November

Farage puts out his first pro-crypto/bitcoin content on his newsletter Fortune and Freedom.

2021

4 January   

The Brexit party changes its name to Reform UK.

15 October 

The DCGG provides written evidence to the Bank of England aiming to dissuade it from the roll-out of a government Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) or “Britcoin”. This stance is later adopted by Farage. 

2022

11 February

Harborne donates £500,000 to the Conservative party. 

24 February

Russia invades Ukraine.

4 April

Boris Johnson's government publishes a landmark pro-crypto plan: "The government has today announced moves that will see stablecoins recognised as a valid form of payment." Harborne’s Tether is now the largest stablecoin issuer in the world. 

9 April

Johnson arrives in Kyiv for Russia-Ukraine peace talks. Before arriving, he reportedly instructs Zelenskyy not to negotiate with Putin and urges Zelenskyy to fight. In his speech on that visit, Johnson says: “We – the UK and others – supply the equipment, the technology, the know-how, the intelligence.” 

6 May

Harborne donates £500,000 to the Conservative party (officially accepted by the party on 11 May). 

Harborne purchases his first shares in QinetiQ, one of the UK’s top defence companies. He owns 3.2%. Market experts suggest that for a purchase of this size Harborne would have paid a premium against the screen prices. (QinetiQ shareholding records from Investegate and Nerve research)

7 May

Harborne visits Johnson at Chequers. He spends the afternoon with Johnson and two of his close associates – Ross Kempsell and Ben Elliot.

8 May

Johnson has a call with Zelenskyy to prepare for the G7 summit the following month.

9 May

Harborne purchases more QinetiQ shares. He now owns 4.25%.   

12 May

Harborne purchases more QinetiQ shares. He now owns 5.14%.

23 May

Harborne purchases more QinetiQ shares. He now owns 6.22%. 

25 May

Harborne purchases more QinetiQ shares. He now owns 7.08%, worth approximately £150m. Harborne is now the third largest shareholder in QinetiQ, through his company AML Global Ltd, which is based in Hong Kong.

31 May

Harborne acquires 6,348,672 QinetiQ shares. His holding is now 8.18%.

6 June

Harborne donates £15,000 to the Conservative party. 

22 June

Tether announces the launch of a UK stablecoin, “GBPT”, tied to the pound, following a government announcement recognising stablecoins as a valid form of payment. This allows Tether to diversify away from sole reliance on the US market and project an image of stability at a time of volatility in crypto markets. 

23 June

Harborne acquires 6,629,470 QinetiQ shares, taking his holding to 9.33%.

7 July

Johnson announces he is resigning as prime minister, but will stay on until a Conservative leadership election is held.

11 July

Harborne acquires 3,926,347 QinetiQ shares, taking the holding to 10.01%. He is now QinetiQ's largest shareholder.

27 July

Harborne’s entire QinetiQ holding is transferred from AML Global Ltd to Klear Kite LLC, in Delaware. Delaware is a more opaque jurisdiction than Hong Kong, potentially shielding the shares from even UK government public scrutiny.

21 August

Harborne visits Johnson at Chequers again. A large group attends for a barbecue thrown by the prime minister. Towards the end, Johnson holds a call on Ukraine  strategy with “the Quad” – the leaders of the US, Germany, France and UK. Harborne is the only guest to stay behind after the barbecue ends.

23 August

The DCGG crypto lobby group meets Nadhim Zahawi, Johnson’s chancellor. 

6 September

Johnson steps down as prime minister.    

3 October

Harborne donates £500,000 to the Conservative party. 

13 October 

At the Bitcoin Amsterdam conference, Farage tells a panel that crypto provides “the ultimate freedom, the ultimate liberty”, and argues against central banks getting at all involved in crypto, saying regulators “lack … understanding” and that central bank digital currencies are a mistake.

26 October    

Parliament votes to recognise crypto and stablecoins as a legal form of payment. The bill was introduced under Johnson.

16 November

Johnson and Harborne meet in Singapore around the Bloomberg New Economy Forum. They dine together. 

1 December

Johnson and Harborne have dinner at Teppan Ya in Singapore.  The next day Johnson appears as the keynote speaker at a blockchain event. 

December 2022 (exact date unknown)

Harborne holds a birthday gathering in Thailand at Kamalaya, Koh Samui, a wellness retreat he owns. At the shoreside table are Farage, Harborne, Farage’s pollster Chris Bruni-Lowe, George Cottrell and Cottrell’s sometime girlfriend, TV personality Georgia Toffolo. The grainy photographs from Kamalaya are the first publicly available images of Farage and Harborne together. Reform's representatives call it "just a birthday party" and threaten legal action over any characterisation of it as evidence of coordination. 

2023

30 January

Johnson and Harborne have a call about Ukraine while Johnson is staying in New York. The call with Harborne, described as a “Ukraine readout”, is the only event listed in Johnson’s itinerary between arriving in the US and going to Washington DC to meet senior US figures about Ukraine. 

1 February 

Following the crypto/stablecoin bill passing, the Treasury publishes a detailed consultation and call for evidence on stablecoin and crypto-asset financial regulation. The document positions stablecoins as vital financial infrastructure. 

12 June 

Johnson ceases to be an MP.

7 September

Johnson and Harborne go to Ukraine for the Yalta European Strategy summit, flying on Harborne’s Dassault Falcon jet. Harborne is the only person to accompany Boris at the high-level opening ceremony. The ceremony is immediately followed by a meeting with Zelenskyy.

17 November

Harborne acquires 8,538,844 QinetiQ shares, taking his holding to 11.48%.

2024

5 April      

Harborne gives £5m to Nigel Farage, which he does not declare. It comes to light in April 2026, reported by the Guardian.  

23 May    

Farage announces he won't stand in the 2024 general election.                   

3 June

Farage U-turns, and is announced as Reform leader and the parliamentary candidate for Clacton.   

5 June

Farage mentions crypto on the campaign trail for the first time. He says “freeing up the UK for crypto is important for me” and announces that crypto is an “important part” of his financial services plan.                               

4 July 

The 2024 general election is held. Farage is elected as MP for Clacton.

17 July 

Harborne pays £33,000 for Farage's trip to the Republican National Convention to support Trump.

13 September

In a cryptocurrency scam dispute, the English and Welsh high court rules that Tether’s US stablecoin, USDT, is a legal form of property – a major boost to the token’s legal status. 

2025

17 January

Harborne donates £27,616.76 to Farage to help fund a trip to attend Trump’s second inauguration. Harborne and Farage go together. Farage hosts a “Stars and Stripes” party. 

21 January

Harborne acquires 4,200,000 QinetiQ shares, taking his holding to 12.63%. 

March 2025

Harborne’s lawyers tell a Delaware court that he has had a “medical episode” which means that he is “temporarily unable to participate” in a lawsuit he is pursuing against the the Wall Street Journal over an article about Tether and  Bitfinex published in 2023. The court pauses the Dow Jones proceedings against the paper’s owners, Dow Jones, until January 2026. 

29 May

Reform’s first crypto policy announcement. Farage announces a crypto assets and digital finance bill at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas during a fireside chat with Frank Corva, former White House correspondent for Bitcoin Magazine. 

The bill promises the creation of a "bitcoin digital reserve" in the Bank of England, a reduction in capital gains tax on crypto from 24% to 10%, and making it illegal for any bank to close customer accounts simply because they send or receive funds from crypto exchanges or trade legal cryptocurrencies.     

Nigel Farage holds up a copy of his proposed crypto assets and digital finance bill at The Bitcoin Conference, Las Vegas, 29 May 2025. Photo: Ian Maule/Getty

23 June

Reform UK announces the Britannia Card, its plan to give non-doms the chance to avoid some UK taxes by paying a £250,000 fee. 

18 July

Trump signs the Genius Act into law – the first federal regulatory framework for US stablecoins. Tether pushed for the law with the help of four lobbying firms. 

July (exact date unknown)

Representatives of US crypto companies Coinbase, Kraken and Ripple meet Reform head of policy Zia Yusuf in order to “woo” Farage.

20 September

Farage and Yusuf write a column calling on the Bank of England to abolish its proposed £20,000 cap on individual sterling stablecoin holdings.

24 September

Farage plugs Tether on Nick Ferrari's LBC show, calling the Bank of England "dinosaurs" for not adopting Tether's stablecoins: "Tether is about to be valued as a $500bn company.” He urges the UK to “embrace” it and become a “global trading centre” in stablecoin.   

25 September

At a private meeting, Farage lobbies the governor of the Bank of England to abandon plans for a Central Bank Digital Currency and to create a “crypto strategic reserve”. 

13 October

Weeks after the £9m donation from Harborne, Farage speaks at the UK Digital Asset Summit, announcing a raft of pro-crypto policies.  

12 November 

Harborne donates £3m to Reform UK.

On the same day, in an op-ed in City AM, Farage pledges there will be no cap on stablecoin ownership under a Reform government. "Crypto is no longer a fringe experiment. It is reshaping payments, finance and global commerce. At the heart of this revolution are stablecoins, digital tokens pegged one-to-one to real-world currencies like the pound or the dollar." 

2026

21 February 

Harborne pays £25,000 in a bid to fly Farage to the UK-US military base in the Chagos Islands. Farage’s trip ends in the Maldives because the UK government refuses him permission to visit the base.

March (exact date unknown)

Farage invests £275,650 in Stack BTC, former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s cryptocurrency venture.

25 March

The UK government introduces measures to ban crypto donations and impose a £100,000 cap on donations from overseas donors.

29 April

Harborne tells the Telegraph he will fight the overseas political donation cap proposed by Labour in court.

The Guardian reveals Harborne’s £5m gift to Farage, made in early 2024. 

13 May

The parliamentary standards commissioner launches an inquiry into the £5m gift and whether Farage broke rules by not declaring it.

15 May

Harborne acquires 3,542,783 QinetiQ shares, taking his stake to 15.08% – the peak holding in the record, 78,531,288 shares. 

30 May

Reform’s crypto assets and digital finance bill vanishes from the party’s website. They later tell the BBC it is still party policy. 

22 June

The Bank of England abolishes plans for a £20,000 stablecoin cap. 

28 June 

It emerges that Harborne is registered to vote at Hampshire farmhouse. In December records described him as an overseas voter. 

8 July 

The Guardian reports that the undisclosed gift was reported to the National Crime Agency and that at least four Suspicious Activity Reports were filed by banks relating to transactions involving senior Reform figures and donors.

5 August

The FT reveals that on 10 June 2024, during the general election campaign, three things happened: George Cottrell’s mother, Fiona, gave £1,075,000 to a Richard Tice company, Britain Means Business; Britain Means Business then donated £500,000 to Reform UK; and Reform repaid £200,000 of the money to another Tice company, Tisun. The Guardian had previously reported that Cottrell gave his mother $1.4m shortly before she made the transfer. It is illegal to disguise the source of a political donation – this is likely to be what the police are investigating. Also, what happened to the other £575,000 is unclear – if it was used to settle an outstanding £1.08m debt that Reform owed Tice, that should also have been declared.