New UK Election Funding Rules Could Hit Reform's Crypto Billionaire Donors
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- The UK government announced measures Monday that extend a £100,000 cap on overseas donations to cover a donor's first year of UK residency and require candidates to prove pre-campaign funding came from "legitimate sources."
- Company donations will now be judged on post-tax profits over five years rather than revenue, a change designed to exclude firms with large turnover but murky operations.
- Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based Tether stakeholder who holds a 12% stake in the stablecoin issuer, has donated £12 million to Reform UK and since registered to vote in the UK.
- Ben Delo, the Hong Kong-based BitMEX co-founder pardoned by President Trump in 2025, has donated roughly £4 million to Reform UK; his stated plan to relocate to Britain would cap his giving at £100,000 for a full year.
- The reforms build on a March package that already capped overseas donations and banned crypto contributions until the UK can regulate them—Reform was the only major British party accepting crypto at the time, though neither Harborne's nor Delo's donations were actually denominated in cryptocurrency.
- Nigel Farage is already under investigation over an undeclared £5 million ($6.7 million) gift from Harborne, and now faces a separate inquiry call after a Sunday Times report alleged he failed to declare in-kind support from George Cottrell, a convicted fraudster seeking a Trump pardon.
- Liberal Democrat MP Josh Babarinde has written to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner asking for an investigation into Farage's alleged failure to declare financial support from Cottrell.
Why it matters: Reform UK's two principal mega-donors—Harborne and Delo—would be locked out of large-scale giving for at least a year under the new residency cap, directly throttling the party's fundraising runway while the bill heads to its final Commons stage next week.
