Investigation · Reform UK party finance
The money machine, and the four inquiries around it
Last updated: ~14 min read
Reform UK has taken more money from one man than any British party has ever taken from a living individual. It runs no local accounts anywhere in the country, and none of its registered money is recorded to Cornwall. Four separate official processes are now running, none of which has established any wrongdoing. This is what the public registers actually show — and what they cannot show.
From one donor
£15m
Christopher Harborne to Reform UK, 2025–26
Loan turned into a gift
£613,000
Tisun Investments, written off January 2025
Met investigation
No arrests
Opened February 2025. No charges.
Registered to Cornwall
£0
Reform UK operates no local accounting units
Everything on this page comes from public records — the Electoral Commission's register of donations and loans, Companies House filings, Reform UK's own audited accounts, and the UK Parliament's registers. Where a claim rests on journalism rather than a record, it is labelled as such and attributed.
Electoral Commission–registered donations accepted between May 2024 and March 2026, deduplicated where a donation appears in both a pre-poll and a quarterly return. Tisun Investments' figure is a loan the party did not repay, which its audited accounts record as converted into a donation. The register was published to the first quarter of 2026 when these figures were taken.
One donor accounts for the great majority of Reform UK's recent income. The figures are large, they are lawful, and they are on the public record — and the register's own quirks make them easy to get wrong.
Christopher Harborne is Reform UK's dominant donor. The Electoral Commission register records £15,000,000 in cash donations from him to the party across 2025–26, in three payments — and a further £10,190,000 to the Brexit Party, the same registered entity under its former name, in 2019–20.
| Accepted | Amount | EC reference |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Aug 2025 | £9,000,000 | C0833694 |
| 12 Nov 2025 | £3,000,000 | C0835545 |
| 23 Jan 2026 | £3,000,000 | C0836608 |
| Recipient | Total | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Reform UK, 2025–26 | £15,000,000 | 1 Aug 2025 – 23 Jan 2026 |
| Brexit Party era (same EC entity, 7931) | £10,190,000 | 4 Apr 2019 – 14 Feb 2020 |
| That entity, lifetime | £25,190,000 | 2019–2026 |
| Conservative and Unionist Party | £1,793,888 | 4 May 2001 – 28 Sep 2022 |
| Nigel Farage, as a regulated donee | £52,616.76 | 17 Jan 2025 – 19 Feb 2026 |
The Brexit Party donations appear on the register under the recipient name “Reform UK”, because it is the same registered entity renamed. Adding the rows up without splitting them by date produces a total that looks entirely recent and is not.
The donations are permissible. The statutory test for an individual donor under section 54 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 is entry on a UK electoral register — not residence, not nationality, not tax status — and there is no cap on how much a permissible individual may give. A 2020 Electoral Commission disclosure states in terms that Harborne "is a registered overseas elector and therefore a permissible donor", and the released correspondence shows the Commission queried the party three times and obtained written confirmation from the relevant Electoral Registration Officer. No Commission ruling, sanction, forfeiture or fine has ever arisen from a Harborne donation.
No company was used as a conduit for any of it. Every one of Harborne's registered donations is recorded with donor status "Individual" and carries no company registration number.
Separately from the register, Harborne gave Nigel Farage a £5,000,000 personal gift in April 2024. Bankers reported that gift to the National Crime Agency in a Suspicious Activity Report, because they could not establish the ultimate source of the funds. A Suspicious Activity Report is a statutory filing by a regulated professional, not an investigation and not a crime report; the Agency's on-record position is that it does not confirm or deny receiving them. No finding, arrest or charge has resulted, and no public authority has alleged wrongdoing by Harborne.
In June 2026, shortly after the Government announced a proposed £100,000 annual cap on donations from overseas electors, Harborne re-registered to vote at a UK address. Registering as a UK resident is lawful, and electoral rules set no minimum number of days at an address. None of his three registered donations to Reform UK is affected by the proposed cap: the most recent predates the announcement, and the cap is not law.
three cash donations, 2025–26
nine registered funded visits, Dec 2024 – Mar 2026
Both figures are Electoral Commission–registered, and both are lawful. They are different ledger types — cash donations to a party, and non-cash funded visits to an individual regulated donee — shown together only to show scale.
The personal donations to Nigel Farage are examined in full in the Nigel Farage dossier.
In the week before the 2024 general election, money moved between four parties across three days. Three of those movements are on public registers. One is not, and the difference matters more than the amounts.
Fiona Cottrell
Private donor
approximately £1 million
10 June 2024
Reported by the Guardian, BBC and ITV. Not a registrable transaction.
Reported, not a register entry
Britain Means Business Ltd
Company No. 10893794 — sole director Richard Tice
£250,000
10 June 2024
Electoral Commission ref C0579169
Public register record
Reform UK
Central Party
£400,000
10 June 2024
Loan repayment to Tisun Investments, recorded the same day across five separate loans
Public register record
Tisun Investments Ltd
Company No. 05925324 — sole director Richard Tice
A second £250,000 donation from Britain Means Business to Reform UK was received on 12 June 2024 (ref C0579170). Nothing establishes that the loan repayment was funded by the donation; both movements are simply recorded on the same day.
The payment into Britain Means Business is the only movement in this chain that no register records, because a payment into a private company is not a political donation. Cornwall Political Watch has not seen the underlying banking records; this step is reported here as the claim of the newspapers that published it, and the company's filed accounts contain no profit and loss account that could confirm or contradict it.
George Cottrell himself has never appeared as a donor or a lender in the Electoral Commission register. That means no reportable donation from him has been reported — it does not mean no money moved.
| Accepted | Donor | Amount | EC reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 May 2024 | Fiona Cottrell | £250,000 | C0579154 |
| 29 May 2024 | Fiona Cottrell | £250,000 | C0579155 |
| 17 Feb 2025 | Fiona Cottrell | £250,000 | C0795481 |
Most coverage of this story describes two donations totalling £500,000. The register records three, totalling £750,000 — the third accepted in February 2025, after the election, which is why the investigation reporting generally omits it.
The Guardian reported in July 2026, citing financial industry sources, that George Cottrell transferred sums to his mother shortly before her donations, and that approximately £1 million reached Britain Means Business by the same route. Cottrell's lawyers have said that "any political donations his mother has made have been entirely her own decision, and are a matter for her". The transfers are reported, not registered: a payment into a private company is not a political donation and does not appear on any register.
George Cottrell was UKIP's deputy treasurer and head of fundraising, and chief of staff to Nigel Farage while Farage led the party. In July 2016 he was arrested by US federal agents at Chicago O'Hare, returning from the Republican National Convention as part of Farage's travelling party. Under a plea agreement the great majority of the original counts were dismissed, and he pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud, serving around eight months in a US federal prison. He is a convicted fraudster; he was not convicted of money laundering.
Farage's Register of Members' Financial Interests records exactly two benefits from George Cottrell: £9,253.60 of travel, accommodation and security for a visit to Belgium in April 2024, and a £15,276.72 flight from Teterboro to Palm Beach in December 2024. The July 2026 allegations concern other, earlier benefits said not to have been registered.
Reform UK's deputy leader has never personally donated to his own party. His money reached it another way, through two companies he controls — lawfully, and recorded in the party's audited accounts.
Richard Tice has never personally donated to Reform UK. His funding of the party has run entirely through two companies he controls: Tisun Investments Ltd, which lent it £1,408,000 interest-free, and Britain Means Business Ltd, which has donated £654,919.17.
| Lent | £1,408,000 | 51 interest-free loans, January 2020 – September 2023 |
|---|---|---|
| Repaid | £795,000 | Across the life of the loan book |
| Converted to donations | £613,000 | 7 January 2025 |
| Outstanding | £0 | At 31 December 2025 |
The party recorded the write-off in its own audited accounts, naming both the company and its director:
“During the year, the Party settled a loan from a company controlled by a related party. (Tisun Investments Ltd, a company which R Tice is a director) The loan had an opening balance of £883,000. Repayments of £270,000 were made during the year and the remaining balance of £613,000 was irrevocably released by the lender and treated as donations to the Party. No balance remained outstanding at 31 December 2025. No interest was payable on the loan.”— Reform UK, audited financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2025
Reform UK's stated accounting policy is that loans payable which are waived are treated as donations in the period in which they are waived. The auditor's report on those accounts is unqualified.
Britain Means Business Ltd (company 10893794) is a private company limited by guarantee, incorporated in August 2017 under the name Leave Means Leave and renamed in May 2020. Richard Tice is its sole director and sole registered person with significant control. It is registered at the same London address as Tisun Investments.
In the week before the 2024 general election it gave Reform UK £500,000, in two payments of £250,000 on 10 and 12 June 2024.
Its filed accounts show capital and reserves of £10,479 at the end of December 2024, down from £28,864 a year earlier. Micro-entity accounts contain no profit and loss account, so the filing does not disclose what passed through the company during the year.
The Electoral Commission register reports the same donation twice when it falls inside a pre-poll reporting window — once in the pre-poll return and again in the quarterly return. Britain Means Business's two £250,000 payments each appear twice, so a straight count of the rows gives £1 million. The correct figure is £500,000, and it is the figure the BBC and ITV use.
Four official processes are running. Coverage routinely merges them, and one of them runs in the opposite direction to the one most readers assume.
Investigation tracker
4 of 4 strands still open
Official processes concerning Reform UK party finance
Status as at 9 August 2026
Open investigation. No findings have been published and no wrongdoing has been established.
The Metropolitan Police opened an investigation in February 2025 after a referral from the Electoral Commission. Detectives from the Met's Special Enquiry Team are investigating alleged offences under section 61 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which covers arrangements that conceal or disguise the true source of a donation. Every limb of that section requires knowledge, or an intent to deceive. Early investigative advice has been sought from the Crown Prosecution Service. The Met's statement names no party, no donor and no individual — the attribution to Reform UK comes from reporting, not from the force.
What happens next: A charging decision, or none. No timetable has been published.
Open investigation. No findings have been published and no wrongdoing has been established.
The Commissioner opened an inquiry under Rule 5 of the Code of Conduct on 13 May 2026, concerning the £5,000,000 personal gift from Christopher Harborne. It is not about George Cottrell. It was suspended on 8 July 2026 under paragraph 40 of the Procedural Protocol, which requires the Commissioner to suspend an investigation when its subject ceases to be a Member. That is a procedural consequence of the resignation, not a finding of any kind.
What happens next: If Farage is returned at the Clacton by-election, the inquiry resumes. If he is not, the Commissioner decides whether resuming it is appropriate and proportionate.
Open investigation. No findings have been published and no wrongdoing has been established.
The Commissioner opened an inquiry into Richard Tice MP on 28 July 2026 under Rule 6 of the Code of Conduct, which concerns declaring an interest in parliamentary proceedings — a different obligation from registering one. The Commissioner does not publish the subject matter of an open inquiry, and no finding has been made.
What happens next: The Commissioner publishes an outcome, or rectifies the matter.
Open investigation. No findings have been published and no wrongdoing has been established.
This is the only National Crime Agency activity that has been publicly confirmed, and it runs in the opposite direction to the one readers assume: it is an internal-conduct review of a complaint made against the Agency, alleging that it leaked financial information. It is not an investigation into any donation. The Agency's position on the separate Suspicious Activity Report is that it does not confirm or deny receiving such reports.
“An investigation was launched in February 2025 after a referral was made to the Metropolitan Police by the Electoral Commission relating to donations made to a political party ahead of the 2024 UK general election. Detectives from the Met's Special Enquiry Team are investigating alleged offences under Section 61 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. Early investigative advice has been sought from the Crown Prosecution Service and two people have so far been interviewed under caution. No arrests have been made.”— Metropolitan Police statement, 26 July 2026
Section 61 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 is concerned with arrangements that conceal or disguise the true source of a donation. Every limb of it requires knowledge, or an intent to deceive. An investigation into alleged offences under it is not a finding that any offence occurred, and nobody has been charged.
In March 2026 the Government announced a moratorium on cryptocurrency donations and a cap on money from overseas electors. Neither is law, and the word "ban" is doing work the statute does not.
On 25 March 2026 the Government announced a moratorium on political donations made in cryptoassets, and a £100,000-a-year cap on donations from overseas electors. Both are intended to take effect retrospectively from that date. Neither is law. They are amendments tabled for the report stage of the Representation of the People Bill, which as at August 2026 had not completed its stages in the Commons and had not been considered by the Lords at all.
The Electoral Commission's own guidance still states that cryptoasset donations are not prohibited in electoral law, and that no changes have yet been made. A crypto donation is currently treated as a non-monetary donation, valued in sterling at the time of receipt, subject to the ordinary permissibility and reporting rules.
The proposed measure is a moratorium rather than a ban, and the independent reviewer who recommended it described it as "an interlude in which the regulatory environment can catch up" rather than a prelude to a permanent prohibition. It would work by treating a cryptoasset donation as one received from a person who is not a permissible donor, which engages the existing statutory duty to return it.
The proposed cap is £100,000 per calendar year per donor, aggregated across all recipients rather than per party. It would apply not only to registered overseas electors but to anyone registered as an ordinary elector who was not resident in the UK for any part of the period beginning at the start of the previous calendar year.
No cryptoasset donation has ever appeared on the Electoral Commission's published register, for Reform UK or for any other party — a sweep of all 4,205 donations accepted since January 2025 found none, and the Commission told a parliamentary committee in February 2026 that no party had reported any. Cryptoasset payments of £500 or less fall outside the reporting regime altogether, so this does not establish that none were received.
Reform UK operated a dedicated cryptocurrency donation page. Archived response headers show it returning its usual content on the afternoon of 25 March 2026, and redirecting to the party's ordinary donation page by the early hours of the following morning.
Reform UK's largest donations are not in cryptocurrency. The register records them as cash from individuals. Where donors have been described as crypto billionaires, that describes the source of their wealth, not the form of their donations — and it is the proposed overseas cap, not the crypto moratorium, that would bear on sums of that size.
The man at the top of this story is not currently an MP. He resigned the seat he won in 2024 and is contesting the by-election that followed.
Status
Seat vacant — poll on 13 August 2026
Nigel Farage was elected MP for Clacton in July 2024 and ceased to be its MP on 8 July 2026, by appointment to the Stewardship of the Manor of Northstead — the office-of-profit device used because an MP cannot resign directly. He is standing again at the resulting by-election. The writ was received by the returning officer on 10 July 2026 and the poll is on 13 August 2026, with a record 34 candidates nominated, the largest field for any UK parliamentary election. Until the declaration, Clacton has no sitting MP.
Press reporting placed the resignation in the context of continuing scrutiny of gifts and donations. Farage's own stated reason for vacating the seat was to seek a fresh mandate. No document establishes a motive either way.
This site covers Cornwall, and the honest Cornwall finding here is an absence — one that is more revealing than a connection would have been.
Reform UK is financially centralised to an unusual degree. All 502 donations on its Electoral Commission record are registered to the central party: it operates no local, regional or branch accounting units anywhere in the country. The Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Labour, the Greens and UKIP all run named Cornwall accounting units. Reform UK has none, in Cornwall or anywhere else.
A search of the register for Cornwall returns 130 donations across six parties. None of them is to Reform UK.
There is no Electoral Commission spending return for Reform UK's May 2025 Cornwall Council campaign, and there is not supposed to be one. The statutory regime for party campaign spending covers parliamentary and devolved-legislature elections only; English local elections fall outside it, and individual candidates' returns are filed with the council as returning authority. The absence is a feature of the law, not a failure to report.
No published reporting connects Reform UK's national fundraising to the collapse of its group on Cornwall Council. What departing councillors described was central control over political direction — an expectation that they prioritise national campaigning themes over local ones — which the party denies, and which its Cornwall group leader has also denied. On the published record the money and the collapse are separate stories.
The collapse of Reform UK's group on Cornwall Council — twenty-eight councillors elected in May 2025, and the departures since — is documented separately in the twelve-month collapse and the defections list.
Councillors are covered by the rules in their own right. A local authority member is a “regulated donee” under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act, so a donation to an individual councillor is reportable under that councillor’s own name rather than the party’s — the one route by which Cornwall Reform money could reach the register despite the party running no local accounting units. Every regulated-donee record the Commission holds was retrieved and checked: 10,491 of them, going back to 2001. Forty-one are donations to councillors anywhere in the United Kingdom, and not one is to a Cornwall councillor or connected to Reform UK. No record in the entire set mentions Cornwall at all.
That is a complete answer only above the reporting threshold. A councillor must report a donation to the Commission within 30 days once it exceeds £2,230, either on its own or added to others from the same source; below that figure a donation is lawful and is never published. So what the register establishes is that no reportable donation was made to a Cornwall councillor — not that no money changed hands.
Automatically matched from published news sources. Inclusion does not imply the article concerns party finance.
cornwalllive.com
Failure to deliver huge Langarth development would be 'public disaster' for Cornwall Council - Cornwall Live
Reform UK's leader warned Cornwall Council that failing to deliver the delayed 4,000-home Langarth garden village would be a public disaster.
cornwalllive.com
Another Reform UK councillor in Cornwall quits with fiery statement - Cornwall Live
Cornwall Council's Reform UK group has shrunk to 20 members after Cllr Bruce Craze defected to Restore Britain, following Cllr Roger Tarrant's earlier departure.
cornwalllive.com
'Attack on democracy' could end planning committees in Cornwall - Cornwall Live
Cornwall Council members criticised proposed government planning reforms that could reduce committee decisions, shifting more applications to officers instead of elected councillors.
cornwalllive.com
Political 'plonker' spat leads to huge unexpected Cornish benefit - Cornwall Live
Cornwall Council's Lib Dem leader Leigh Frost apologised to Reform UK's Sean Smith after calling him a "plonker" over Cornish language funding criticism.
cornwalllive.com
Reform UK trying to make it illegal to use Cornish language on election flyers - Cornwall Live
Reform UK's proposed amendment to the Representation of the People Bill would criminalise using Cornish on election material, prompting cross-party criticism from Cornwall's MPs and Mebyon Kernow.
cornwalllive.com
Cornwall councillor called 'complete plonker' demands apology from leader - Cornwall Live
A Reform UK Cornwall councillor has demanded a public apology from the Liberal Democrat council leader who called him "a complete plonker" during a dispute over Cornish Language Strategy spending.
Coverage from cornwalllive.com, devonlive.com, plymouthherald.co.uk. May not be exhaustive.
Every figure on this page was taken from a primary record and checked against it on 9 August 2026. Donation amounts, dates and reference numbers come from the Electoral Commission's register, read from its CSV export rather than its web interface — the interface renders some dates a day early during British Summer Time. Totals are deduplicated, because a donation reported in both a pre-poll and a quarterly return appears on the register twice.
Allegations made by named publications are attributed to them and are not asserted as fact. Where a movement of money rests on journalism rather than a register entry, it is labelled as such on the page. Investigations by the police, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and any other body are reported as investigations: none has produced a finding, and no person has been charged.
| Source | Detail |
|---|---|
| Electoral Commission — register of donations and loans | Primary record for every donation figure, reference number and date on this page. Dates are taken from the register's CSV export. |
| Electoral Commission — Reform UK statement of accounts | Report and audited financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2025, registered number PP7931, which records the Tisun loan conversion in terms. |
| Electoral Commission — donations guidance, candidates and agents at English local government elections | Confirms that a member of a local authority is a regulated donee, and states the £2,230 reporting threshold, its aggregation rule and the 30-day deadline. Footnoted to PPERA Schedule 7 paragraphs 1(8) and 10(1A). |
| Companies House | Filed records for Tisun Investments Ltd (05925324) and Britain Means Business Ltd (10893794), including officers, persons with significant control and filed accounts. |
| UK Parliament — Register of Members' Financial Interests | Registered interests and declared benefits for sitting members. |
| Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards — current investigations | The Commissioner's published list of allegations under investigation, which records the status of each inquiry. |
| legislation.gov.uk and Hansard | Section 54 and section 61 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, and the written ministerial statement of 25 March 2026. |
| Representation of the People Bill | Bill stages and the report-stage amendment paper carrying the tabled cryptoasset and overseas-contributor clauses. |
| Metropolitan Police | The force's own statement of 26 July 2026 setting out the scope and status of its investigation. |
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