The £5 million gift that triggered the Parliamentary Standards investigation is not an isolated payment. On the public record it is one transaction in a financial relationship worth around £30 million, spanning seven years, two political parties and two prime ministers, funded largely by cryptocurrency wealth.
Christopher Charles Sherriff Harborne was born on 18 December 1962 in Sheffield. He has lived in Thailand for more than 20 years and holds Thai citizenship under the name Chakrit Sakunkrit. He owns approximately 12 percent of Tether Limited, the company that issues the world’s most traded stablecoin. His stake makes him one of the wealthiest British citizens most people have never heard of. Very few photographs of him exist in the public domain. He communicates through his lawyers, Schillings, who have threatened defamation proceedings against journalists reporting on his political donations.
The donations are a matter of Electoral Commission record, compiled with additional reporting by the investigative outlet The Nerve. Between 2001 and 2018, Harborne gave £266,000 to the Conservative Party. In 2019 he switched to Nigel Farage, giving the Brexit Party more than £12 million and becoming its main source of funding. The party’s former communications director, Gawain Towler, has described how Harborne had a desk at the campaign headquarters and immersed himself in the campaign data. That November, Farage announced the Brexit Party would stand down 317 candidates in Conservative-held seats, a decision widely credited with helping deliver Boris Johnson’s 80 seat majority.
After the Brexit Party became Reform UK, Harborne donated a further £10 million or more, including £9 million in 2025, the largest single donation to a UK political party in a financial year, and £3 million in March 2026. His donations to Reform UK and its predecessor now exceed £22 million, roughly two thirds of all the money the party has received since its foundation.
One man has provided the majority of the funding behind the party that leads the national polls.
Then there are the personal gifts. £5 million to Farage in the spring of 2024, weeks before he reversed his decision not to stand for Parliament and announced his candidacy in Clacton. £27,616 so Farage could attend Donald Trump’s second inauguration. £32,836 for Farage and a staff member to fly to the United States after the attempted assassination of Trump. And £1 million to Boris Johnson in 2022 after he left Downing Street, recorded on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
The Nerve set the £5 million gift against Farage’s record on cryptocurrency. Two months after it, Farage told a press conference that “freeing up the UK for crypto is important for me.” In May 2025 he held up a copy of his proposed Cryptoassets and Digital Finance Bill at the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas. He wrote an article for Reform’s website headlined “Reform’s Britain will lead the digital money revolution,” and criticised the Bank of England’s rules on cryptocurrency ownership as “absurdity.” Harborne derives the majority of his wealth from cryptocurrency. Farage says he “can’t be bought by anybody” and that the gift was made “on a completely unconditional basis.”
Johnson’s connection to Harborne extends beyond the £1 million. The Nerve, and separately the Guardian, reported that in January 2023 Johnson flew on Harborne’s private jet, with the billionaire’s pilot, on a trip that took him to Ukraine to meet President Zelenskyy. Johnson was still the MP for Uxbridge at the time. The flights do not appear on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
The reporting has drawn responses from senior MPs. Baroness Hodge, the former chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said it “clearly raises questions that everybody involved in both giving and receiving the donations need to answer,” asking whether there was “a link between the donations and statements and commitments made in relation to cryptocurrency.” Phil Brickell MP, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Anti-Corruption and Responsible Tax, asked: “What does this Thailand-based cryptobillionaire want in return for his money?” Clive Lewis MP has called for an investigation as “a matter of priority.”
The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner opened a formal inquiry on 13 May 2026 into whether Farage breached Commons rules by failing to register the £5 million. The Electoral Commission is considering whether to open its own investigation. Farage maintains the payment was a personal gift rather than a political donation, has said it is intended to fund his personal security, and told the BBC it was “none of your business.” His own shadow Chancellor, Robert Jenrick, said it was “a legitimate question for the media to ask.”
Whether any of this costs Farage his seat is a long chain, not an automatic one. The Commissioner would have to find a breach. It would have to be judged serious enough to reach the Standards Committee, which would have to recommend a suspension of 10 sitting days or more, which MPs would have to approve. Only then would a recall petition open in Clacton, where Farage holds a majority of 8,405. If 10 percent of registered voters signed, he would lose the seat. Farage’s previous breaches of the rules were classified as inadvertent and did not reach the committee. Whether £5 million undeclared is treated the same way is for the Commissioner to decide.
Farage says the money is unconditional. The public record shows £30 million from one man, funded by cryptocurrency, behind roughly two thirds of Reform UK’s money; a £5 million gift that went undeclared and is now under investigation; pro-cryptocurrency policy positions that followed his donations; and undeclared private flights for a former prime minister. Those are the documented facts. What they add up to is the question. Readers can weigh it for themselves.