REFORM UK leader Nigel Farage visited Scotland last week to announce former Scottish Tory MSP Graham Simpson had defected to the party.
The announcement came after Farage unveiled plans to scrap the Human Rights Act – which enshrines the European Convention on Human Rights into law – and replace it with a bill that only covers British citizens.
Now that Holyrood – for only the second time in its history – has a Reform UK MSP in its midst, we’ve delved into the records to find out who is funding the party and why they might be doing so.
Who are Reform’s biggest donors?
ACCORDING to Electoral Commission data, by far the biggest donor is British billionaire Christopher Harborne, who has given £13.7 million to the party since 2019 – though his last donation was made in February 2020 when it was still known as the Brexit Party.
The British-Thai entrepreneur is the CEO of Sherriff Global Group which trades in private planes, and he is the owner of aviation fuel company AML Global. He is also a crypto investor.
He previously donated £1.8m to the Tories between 2003 and 2022 and made a £1m donation to Boris Johnson in November 2022 after he stood down as prime minister.
Other large donors include party deputy leader Richard Tice, who has donated £613,000 to the party through his company Tisun Investments Ltd.
He has also put money into the party through Britain Means Business Ltd – previously known as Brexit campaign group Leave Means Leave. More than £600,000 of donations has been made to Reform by Britain Means Business, with an additional £990,000 recorded under Leave Means Leave.
Jeremy Hosking is another huge donor to Reform, having handed the party just over £2.4m, with his last donation of £125,0000 given in June 2024.
He is a shareholder in Crystal Palace, having been part of a consortium that saved the club from administration in 2010, and has previously appeared on the Sunday Times Rich List.
His name came up in the news recently when Kinloch Castle in Rum was returned to the market. Hosking withdrew a bid for the property two years ago, blaming then biodiversity minister Lorna Slater after she put the sale on hold after Isle of Rum Community Trust raised concerns.
Former girlfriend of King Charles, Fiona Cottrell, is another notable donor who has given the party £750,000 – with the most recent donation of £250,000 made in February this year.
She is the mother of convicted fraudster George Cottrell, who is a long-time associate of Farage, having previously been head of fundraising for Ukip.
He was sentenced to eight months in prison in the US in March 2017 after being found guilty of one count of wire fraud for offering money laundering services on the dark web.
Earlier this year, George Cottrell – who is believed to live between the UK and Montenegro – launched a polling and campaigns company called Geostrategy International Unlimited. As an unlimited firm, it will never have to file financial accounts but can still make political donations – something which has alarmed transparency campaigners.
Campaign group Spotlight on Corruption warned earlier this year that unlimited companies such as Geostrategy International can “easily be abused” and urged the Electoral Commission to “ensure they do not provide a backdoor for illegal donations”.
Cryptocurrency links
AT the end of May, Farage announced at a cryptocurrency conference in Las Vegas that Reform UK would begin accepting donations in the form of Bitcoin.
He held up a draft of a "Crypto Assets and Digital Finance Bill" that he said he would pass if he were elected prime minister.
It proposes several changes to the treatment of crypto in the UK, such as cutting capital gains taxes on crypto assets to 10%, from the current maximum of 24%, as well as instating a "Bitcoin digital reserve" at the Bank of England.
Not only is Harborne a crypto investor, but Simon William Smith – who has given the party £58,000 – was revealed by openDemocracy in June to be an “angel investor” with significant interests in cryptocurrency and related technologies.
Oil and gas
HOSKING'S business, Hosking Partners, was estimated by openDemocracy to have at least $134m invested in fossil fuels.
He told DeSmog last year that he did not have millions invested in fossil fuels, and the clients of his firm were the “beneficiaries of these investments”.
Tice (below) has also been a vocal critic of net-zero policies and has previously denied climate change is an issue.
"We've got potentially hundreds of billions of energy treasure in the form of shale gas," Tice said last week.
"It's grossly financially negligent to a criminal degree to leave that value underground and not to extract it."
The party has promised to reverse the Government’s ban on fresh North Sea oil and gas drilling as a “day one” priority if elected to power.
First Corporate Consultants Limited has given Reform more than £200,000. Terence Mordaunt, who was director until resigning in March 2025, previously chaired the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a group that denies climate science.
Reform also received £50,000 from Nova Venture Holdings earlier this year, controlled by US-based oil and gas investor Jacques Tohme.
Tax havens
A LARGE chunk of money donated to Reform also appears to have come from individuals and organisations in perceived tax havens or connected to them.
Financier Roger Nagioff gave £100,000 to the party in December. He has given his country of residence to Companies House as Monaco.
Luxembourg-based brokerage firm JB Drax Honoré has also donated £50,000 through its UK subsidiary.
Reform have proposed policies such as giving non-doms the chance to avoid some UK taxes by paying a £250,000 fee, with the proceeds going to people on the lowest incomes.
Under Reform's plan, non-doms would pay the fee for a new Britannia Card and in return not be taxed on wealth, income or capital gains earned abroad.
