Parliamentary standards watchdog formally launched a probe into Nigel Farage over an undeclared £5M gift tied to crypto donations.
Summary
- Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Daniel Greenberg has opened a formal inquiry into whether Farage breached the Commons Code of Conduct.
- The £5M came from Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based investor who holds a 12% stake in Tether and has given over £22M to Reform UK.
- The UK government banned political crypto donations in March 2026 after the Rycroft Review warned that digital assets could channel foreign money into elections.
The investigation centers on a £5 million payment Farage received from Christopher Harborne in early 2024, weeks before he reversed a public decision and announced his candidacy for the Clacton seat.
Harborne, who holds a 12% stake in stablecoin issuer Tether, has separately donated over £22 million to Reform UK since the party’s founding, a total that makes him arguably the largest single financial backer of any British political party in recent memory.
Farage has maintained the £5 million was a personal gift intended to cover lifetime security costs, citing a firebomb attack on his home, and that it falls under an exemption from disclosure rules. Reform UK described the payment as “unconditional and irrevocable.” Both the Conservative and Labour parties rejected the exemption argument and referred the matter to Commissioner Greenberg, who has now formally opened a full inquiry.
The ban that changed British political finance
The probe arrives seven weeks after Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a moratorium on political crypto donations, effective March 25, 2026. The measure followed the Rycroft Review’s conclusion that digital assets posed a unique risk for foreign interference, given the difficulty in tracing the origin of funds across pseudonymous blockchain transactions. The ban is being written into the Representation of the People Bill with criminal penalties for non-compliance once enacted.
BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo separately disclosed donating approximately £4 million to Reform UK since the start of 2026. Reform was the first Westminster party to accept crypto, a policy Farage announced at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas.
If Greenberg finds a breach, sanctions range from a formal apology to suspension from the Commons, potentially triggering a by-election in Clacton. A YouGov poll this week put Reform UK at 28% of voting intentions, ahead of both Labour and the Conservatives.
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