Reform UK’s £72 Million Windfall Collides With Police Probe

Reform UK has won five seats in the House of Commons and more than 4 million votes—approximately 14 percent of the national vote share—in the July general election. The party, originally founded in 2018 as the Brexit Party to pressure the government over the UK’s exit from the European Union, rebranded as Reform UK in 2020.

Its latest financial boost began on Friday, when Ben Delo announced a £36 million donation, the largest single contribution ever made to a British political party. Delo, who was born in Sheffield but has been living in Hong Kong, has indicated that he intends to return to the UK. The donation is structured to equal roughly £1 million per month until 2029, the latest statutory date by which the next UK general election must be called.

Delo paid the entire £36 million upfront to preempt any future caps on large-scale political donations that the Labour government might introduce. The payment was more than four times the £8 million he had already given to Reform UK earlier this year.

On Saturday, Thailand-based British businessman Christopher Harborne matched the contribution with his own £36 million donation. Harborne, who also goes by the name Chakrit Sakunkrit, wrote in the *Telegraph* that his “competitive spirit” prompted him to match Delo’s donation and that he expected “nothing, personally” in return.

Together, the two contributions delivered a record-breaking £72 million ($97 million) cash injection to Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist party over a 48-hour period. The total exceeds the approximately £69 million that all of the United Kingdom’s political parties combined raised in donations during the entirety of last year.

Neither contribution was made using digital assets, despite both donors’ deep ties to the cryptocurrency sector. The UK Electoral Commission banned political donations made directly in cryptocurrency in March, following debates in Parliament over the difficulty of tracing digital tokens. Delo co-founded the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX in 2014, while Harborne accumulated significant wealth through technology investments, including a major stake in the stablecoin operator Tether.

Harborne has contributed £15 million to Reform UK since the last general election and has historically been a major financial backer of both the Conservative Party and the Brexit Party, which was Reform UK’s predecessor. His financial relationship with Reform UK is already under official review: the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is investigating whether Nigel Farage, the party’s leader and Member of Parliament for Clacton, failed to properly declare a £5 million personal gift from Harborne.

Delo’s financial background has also drawn international legal scrutiny. In 2022, he pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court to violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to establish and maintain adequate anti-money laundering protocols at BitMEX. He received a sentence of 30 months of probation and a presidential pardon from Donald Trump in 2025.

The transactions arrived as Britain debates how its political system is funded. There is currently no limit on what UK-based donors can give, but Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s governing Labour Party is considering tighter campaign finance regulations. Labour has capped donations from British citizens living overseas at £100,000 and plans to apply similar limits to recent returnees.

Regulations implemented in March also require donors to be on the UK electoral register for at least 12 months before they can donate more than £100,000 in a year. Delo’s planned return to the UK is therefore taking place against a changing set of political donation rules.

Reform UK plans to use the £72 million war chest to professionalize its operations and build a permanent campaign footprint. A party spokesperson said the money would place the party on an immediate “election footing,” enabling it to hire 400 campaign managers—one for each of its target parliamentary seats—and recruit “the brightest and best minds to work on policy.”

The funding has arrived amid a widening criminal inquiry. The Metropolitan Police opened an investigation on Tuesday into allegations of campaign finance fraud within Reform UK after undercover footage broadcast by Channel 4 News showed two senior Reform UK aides discussing methods to bypass the UK’s strict ban on foreign political donations.

Scotland Yard has merged the new inquiry into an existing, ongoing investigation into payments received by Reform UK before the general election held in July. A spokesperson for Reform UK stated that the party “denies any wrongdoing and will fully cooperate” with the police.

With its new multi-million-pound war chest, Reform UK is now positioned to run one of the most heavily funded political campaigns in British history.