It has been three months since the Guardian revealed that Nigel Farage had accepted a £5m gift from Christopher Harborne, a billionaire donor to Reform UK.
This was not the first story in our continuing investigation. But it has proved the most significant, and the consequences of the disclosure are still being played out.
Little by little, a picture is emerging – one that shows how Reform UK has been funded and by whom. Each new detail raises more questions for Farage and the coterie around him.
Aside from the “gift”, the Guardian has revealed details of secret donations, a behind-the-scenes loan from a donor and how the Metropolitan police have interviewed two people under caution.
Sources have described how staff at several different banks were so concerned about a range of transactions, some of which are referenced above and involved senior figures at the party, that they reported them to the National Crime Agency.
Sources have now told us that George Cottrell, a convicted fraudster based in Montenegro, transferred a total of more than $2m to his mother, Fiona, in 2024, with each sum arriving shortly before she made substantial donations to the party.
The stories have given voters a much clearer idea of the people and the financial transactions that underpin Reform.
It is a financially and politically incestuous set of relationships.
Farage is friends with George Cottrell, who is said to be an unpaid adviser to Reform. Cottrell is friends with Harborne, the billionaire who has given millions to the party, and to Farage himself.
Farage’s deputy, Richard Tice, has known the Cottrell family, he says, for 50 years. Fiona is also a significant donor to the party. George has also lent money to Tice.
These five people are at the heart of a party that believes it can form the next government.
Without them and their money, Reform would not exist in its current form.
Scrutiny has provoked Farage into an array of explanations for why he accepted the £5m gift, and broad declarations there is an establishment plot to undermine him.
Rather than answering questions posed by the Guardian, he and other senior Reform figures have sent threatening legal letters, or attempted to “spoil” the Guardian’s stories with pre-emptive interviews with the Daily Telegraph, which reported what they said uncritically.
Farage has also made unsubstantiated claims about the Guardian’s reporting – citing, without any evidence, illegal hacks involving Russia, or talking about state-orchestrated leaks.
Throwing sand in the air is one way of distracting attention, but when it settles, certain facts remain unchanged, and certain questions remain unanswered.
Several relate to George Cottrell, who is known as “Posh George”, and has been at Farage’s side for at least a decade.
Many of those questions pertain to his wealth and business activity.
In January, the Guardian reported on his alleged role as a frontman for the betting syndicate of the megastar gambler and football proprietor Tony Bloom.
Court documents claimed that Cottrell, as well as raking in millions by allowing Bloom’s syndicate to place bets using accounts in his name, also had a financial interest in the offshore gambling outfit Tether.bet.
The claims went further still: that he had approached gamblers in the UK to use Tether.bet, despite that outfit not holding a UK gambling licence.
Lawyers for Cottrell repeatedly said he was not a director or shareholder of Tether.bet and had not commented on the court proceedings, as he was not party to them. The case relates to a former employee of Bloom’s gambling syndicate who claims he introduced Cottrell to Bloom.
Cottrell, who was unable to pay for legal representation when he was initially arrested in the US in 2016, and then had to rely on family assistance, has seen a rapid reversal in his fortunes since his release from US prison in 2017.
In recent years he has pursued a costly, jet-set lifestyle, often using Montenegro as a base.
Then there are the questions around Farage, who said he was “skint” in 2017.
Not any more. He now owns a number of houses, and has shown flashes of anger when asked about this, and what he has done with the £5m given to him by Harborne.
“Literally none of your business,” he said to the BBC.
The £5m came via a deed of gift in April 2024, just as Farage, who was the main shareholder of Reform UK, weighed his political future.
In fact, the Guardian would later report our sources’ claims that some of the £5m was not transferred to Farage until just before he declared he would stand in the 2024 general election.
Lawyers for Harborne have said their client’s gift was unconditional and that, when it was made, Harborne did not foresee Farage returning to politics.
The Guardian has since been able to shed more light on the tangled web of overlapping personal financial activity and donations to the party.
Cottrell, whom the Guardian revealed is sometimes called Farage’s chief of staff (Reform has said he has never held an official position in the party), was also providing financial support to Tice behind the scenes.
He lent Tice’s company £78,100 in late 2024 when he was already a sitting MP. Tice says this money was then repaid, but only after he made a donation of £613,000 via the same company – Tisun Investments – to Reform. Tice has called it a “bridging loan”, a type of short-term loan.
But the benefits and support Cottrell gave to Farage, and the £78,100 loan to Tice, were a drop in the ocean compared with the apparent largesse Cottrell may have extended to the party.
As the Guardian revealed, his mother, a woman with aristocratic roots but who is understood to be of relatively modest means, had secretly given Britain Means Business – a fundraising vehicle for Reform solely controlled by Tice – £1m on 10 June 2024, just weeks before the July general election.
Half the sum, £500,000, was almost immediately transferred into the party, despite queries from bankers to Tice about the origin of the funds. This was in addition to two more donations of £250,000 made in her own name in May of the same year.
On Wednesday, the Guardian revealed that sums totalling more than $2m were transferred to Fiona by her son, according to financial industry sources.
The pair have now been interviewed under caution as part of a police investigation into the 2024 donations from Fiona to the party and Britain Means Business.
Fiona has not responded to multiple efforts by this newspaper to contact her. George has not denied giving his mother large sums of money. Instead, his lawyers said any political donations his mother had made had been entirely her decision and were a matter for her.
Two parliamentary standards investigations are due to be concluded in the autumn, one into the £5m gift Farage received from Harborne; another into his benefits from Cottrell.
There is an ongoing Metropolitan police investigation.
Reform is learning that with great success comes ever greater scrutiny.
