Richard Tice has been referred to parliament’s standards watchdog over an undeclared loan of nearly £80,000 from Nigel Farage’s aide George Cottrell.
The development opens up the prospect of another inquiry into a Reform UK MP by the watchdog, which was investigating Farage after the Guardian’s revelation that he received an undeclared £5m gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.
Tice, who is Reform’s deputy leader, received the loan in late 2024, months after he was elected as the MP for Boston and Skegness, in a transaction that originally caused bankers to raise concerns with authorities.
However, the parliamentary standards commissioner has now been formally asked by Lisa Smart, a Liberal Democrat frontbench MP, to investigate Tice over his apparent failure to declare the loan in line with rules governing MPs’ conduct.
The watchdog’s investigation into Farage is currently paused because he is no longer an MP after stepping down as the member for Clacton, where he is fighting a byelection that will take place on 13 August.
It is alleged that Tice may have breached the MPs’ code of conduct for failing to declare the loan on the basis that the money appears to have been given at a preferential rate, and that Cottrell’s tax residency in Montenegro made him an “impermissible donor”.
In a letter sent this week to Daniel Greenberg, the commissioner, Smart wrote: “Mr Cottrell is not merely a private acquaintance of Mr Tice, he is an official adviser to Reform UK and Nigel Farage (demonstrated by his use of Reform UK business cards).
“It is highly implausible that the loan would have been negotiated without their party political connection, given this is the central basis of their relationship.”
The sum of £78,100 was paid in December 2024 by Cottrell into the account of Tisun Investments Ltd, a British company of which Tice is a director. It manages many of his financial investments.
The transaction from Cottrell, who was convicted of wire fraud in the US in 2017, was closely examined by bankers, given that the money was being received by a serving MP and came from a convicted criminal.
It was one of a number flagged to the National Crime Agency under its suspicious activity report scheme, which requires banks to highlight large transactions, particularly international ones, under anti-money-laundering legislation.
Around the same time as the loan from Cottrell, Tice is said to have sent approximately £92,000 to fund a property purchase in Dubai for a development called Peninsula Five.
In January last year, Tice gave £613,000 to Reform via Tisun Investments in a relatively unusual case of an MP donating to their own party. A month later a sum of £655,000 was paid into Tisun’s account in what was described by Tice as an overpayment for the property purchase.
Instead of paying cash for the property, he said he had got a mortgage, the Guardian understands.
Around the same time, Tice sent £80,000 from Tisun to Cottrell, seemingly repaying the loan.
However, the £80,000 loan from Cottrell does not appear to have been disclosed either in Tisun Investments’ corporate filings to Companies House or the parliamentary authorities.
Tice is understood to have paid back £1,900 more than he borrowed from Cottrell. This was a loan that appears to have been repaid on terms that were favourable to Tice, given commercial rates of interest, the difficulty in securing loans as large as £80,000 and the likely early repayment fees when paying back a loan so quickly.
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In her letter urging Greenberg to investigate, Smart wrote: “Transparency on these financial arrangements, and an investigation into Mr Tice, are essential for public trust. We cannot allow the rules that protect our democracy from corruption and sleaze to be disregarded by senior politicians – including those from Reform UK.”
Tice said: “The lovely summer heat may be getting to this Lib Dem MP. She is referring to a corporate loan to one of my companies, which are not declarable. I have a number of corporate loans in my companies. None of them are declarable.
“They are to do with my property business activities, not to do with politics. She seems to be confusing corporate loans with MP donations. The shareholdings and directorships are fully declared as required.”
