B (3:28)

He is also by far and away the biggest donor to Nigel Farage, stumping up two thirds of Reform UK's entire funding. Helping Farage get ever closer to Downing street and Changing the entire British political landsc while he's at it. From the Guardian, I'm Helen Pitt. Today in focus. Who is Chris Harborne and why is he donating so much money to Nigel Farage? Tom Burgess, nice to see you again. Welcome back.

A (4:02)

Yeah, yeah, it's really nice to be back.

B (4:03)

So you have spent a lot of time recently looking into this guy, Chris Harborne?

A (4:07)

Yes.

B (4:08)

I had never heard of him. Yes, that's one of those names until, yeah, until I read your magisterial magazine piece for the Guardian. How did he first come on your radar?

A (4:18)

Well, last year we did a story that we called the Boris Files. We got a load of documents about Boris Johnson and what he's done since leaving office and how he's been making money. And in there were some couple of documents about this guy Chris Harborne who rang a bell for me as you know, a donor, one of the bigger political donors. So we got into his relationship with Johnson but then also since then I've got into the much bigger relationship with Nigel Farage and, and I've just been going deeper and deeper and deeper down

B (4:44)

various rabbit holes and at this point in time, how important a political donor is he for Nigel Farage and the Reform Party?

A (4:51)

He's massively important, I think we can safely say that. Reform. Nigel Farage's political project, Reform. Now the Brexit party as it was, is uniquely dependent on this mega donor, Chris Harborne. About two thirds of the of the donations that have come in to fund Farage's party have been from this one guy, Chris Harbor.

B (5:15)

And overall how much has he given to Farage's various political parties?

A (5:19)

22 million pounds. Okay, 22 million in the UK, that's huge.

B (5:23)

And let's go back a bit. Where is he from and what was his upbringing like?

A (5:28)

So there's Christopher Charles Sheriff Harborne, born 1962 in Mossborough, this is near the Peak District. He's the son of a Lloyd's name like a, someone who's like an insurance, an insurance investor kind of called Edgar and it's a very sort of English world. Edgar has an ancestor who's R.C. sheriff, who wrote Dam Busters, kind of jingoistic wartime story with a, with a theme tune that everybody knows. And then in his mother, Hamilton's mother Joan, from a well off background herself. And then you've got Chris growing up, middle of three kids and a very privileged young life. He goes to Westminster private school and then he follows his dad to Cambridge and also like his daddy Rose for his College. And then he's off into kind of really an elite world. So, like, McKinsey, this management consultancy that just, you know, has contracts from. And contacts in elites all over the world. And then he's into the sort of corporate scene, Pepsi and stuff like that. And then he starts to go to Thailand.

B (6:37)

And so he goes there in the 90s. And what has drawn him to Thailand?

A (6:42)

So he turns up in the 90s to do market research stuff, trying to work out what stocks will go up and what stocks will go down and whose debt's good and bad. And that's just when this massive financial crisis starts in Asia. Businesses are going bust, currencies are collapsing. But with all these crises, you know, if you're cle. And everyone who speaks to me about Harborne says he's a very, very clever guy. He could pick his way through this and he could make large amounts of money from this crisis by seeing which companies were going bust and which were going to be all right and that kind of thing.

B (7:17)

Okay, so he's made a lot of money in finance. And then after the Asian financial crash in 1997, he gets really rich, and then he turns his attention back to his home country and starts donating to the Tory Party. Is that right?

A (7:30)

Y. That those donations begin to 2001, and over the next nearly two decades, he gives about £200,000 to the Conservatives in dribs and drops. He seems to be sort of between Thailand and Britain then. And that's when the political decisions start to the conservatives. And by 2011, we know that he's got Thai citizenship and his Thai name and his main base, as far as we can tell now, is Bangkok.

B (7:59)

And why did he adopt a Thai name?

A (8:02)

Right. Well, he says it's something you're obliged to do when you take citizenship.

B (8:05)

Oh, okay.

A (8:07)

And he picked Chakrit Sakunkrit, which means. Chakrit has a sort of Sanskrit root, and it means something like, he who is awake, or like the watchful one.

B (8:18)

And is he a political guy? He's the kind of person who turns up at Tory Party Conference who likes to go to these big dinners in the city. Is that his vibe?

A (8:25)

Well, this is. I think, One of the most fascinating things about Chris Harborne is that, honestly, we don't know. There's plenty of donors, big donors, who will never stop going on about their political donations. Right, But Harborne's not like that. There's a legal filing he's. He's made in the defamation claim, you know, in the States against The Wall Street Journal there, which wrote a story about him. And, and it actually gives this, this sort of fascinating account and really the only account I've seen him give of, of, of of himself. And one of the points it makes is that he's intensely private. That's how his lawyers describe it. It says he doesn his views. He doesn't have social media, he doesn't give interviews. He refused to give one to me. And so there is very limited amount to see on him.

B (9:17)

So you say that he made a lot of money out of the Asian financial crisis. How do you go from that sort of mid level wealth to stratospheric levels of wealth?

A (9:27)

So yeah, I think he had probably millions by the end of the Asian financial crisis. So the turn of the millennium, around the time his political decision starts. So that's when he sets out on his own. He has this hedge fund and he starts investing in all sorts of things. And he sets up a company to do jet fuel. He trades in jet fuel.

B (9:48)

Okay.

A (9:48)

And, and in private jets. Okay, that's lucrative. I guess that makes him a fair old wadge more. But what makes him a, a very, very rich man, among the richest is cryptocurrency.

C (10:02)

So our big topic today is bitcoin. Call this a cryptocurrency.

A (10:07)

Can you? Well, it's really, really clever. So during that crisis 2008, when everyone was absolutely appalled with the banks, good reason. This guy, this coder, Satoshi Nakamoto, comes up with this thing, a digital currency. Now a lot of you are probably wondering what really is a bitcoin? Bitcoin, a way to move money around without banks.

B (10:28)

For anyone who's ever suffered the incompetence of a bank or bristled at fees involved in spending money, the promise of bitcoin is a kind of holy grail.

A (10:38)

And this is a niche thing for a while, but Halborn is one of the early people to understand this. He's had a long standing interest in tech and new technologies. And what he does is he gets in early on bitcoin. And bitcoin initially is not worth very much. But within two or three years, bitcoin is worth a thousand times what it was initially.

B (10:55)

Bitcoins are booming. The price of one unit of the digital currency jumped during the past few weeks from about $40 to nearly $150.

A (11:04)

And then this is other cryptocurrency. And it's based on this platform called Ethereum. There's a whole new world in addition to bitcoin. I'm Here with Vitalik from Ethereum, and I'm Roman Village, and he buys massively, and that's what makes him what they call a whale. Like a. Like a. Like a sort of mega trader.

B (11:22)

Okay, and then what does he do next?

A (11:24)

Right, so he's been playing the markets, he's been trading cryptocurrencies and making an enormous whack of money. We don't know how much. I mean, plausibly, billions held in these cryptocurrencies. But then he gets a chance to move from being a kind of crypto trader to have a stake in a crypto exchange, but more importantly, have a stake in the company called Tether. What Tether is, is it issues a different kind of thing, a Stablecoin. So not like Bitcoin, going up and down all the time in value. One tether, stablecoin is worth $1. The company. Tether is arguably the most profitable company per employee ever. And pretty much four people own almost all of the shares in it. One of them is Chris Harbaugh.

B (12:13)

So he's fabulously wealthy, fabulously secretive, you're

A (12:16)

properly, properly off the charts rich.

B (12:18)

Why does he start deciding to funnel what for him is actually a tiny, tiny proportion of his wealth into British political parties when he doesn't even live in the UK anymore? And what's his interest in Farage?

A (12:30)

So this is the fascination with Chris Harborne is that we have to really try and piece this together by his actions. So we've got sort of nearly 20 years of conservative donations, a few grand if you go there. And then early 2019, I thought, I

D (12:47)

know what I'm going to do. I'm going to set up a party. I'm going to call it the Brexit Party.

A (12:54)

The Brexit Party is up and running.

D (12:56)

And you are here today at the birth, at the launch of a new force in British politics. Welcome to the Brexit Party.

A (13:04)

Now Nigel Farage is riding back into the political scene, saying Brexit is being betrayed. Theresa May is going to sell us out. And I'm putting together a new party, wiggle us down for the European elections. And initially, it's absolutely all over the place. Yeah, they're taking money on PayPal. They haven't really got any big donors. And on the scene arrives Chris harbor and his sister Catherine.

B (13:26)

Did you know that scientists have started using politicians instead of rats in their experiments?

A (13:36)

So his sister's a Tory councillor in Richmond. She's defecting to stand as a candidate for the Brexit party in these Crucial European elections.

B (13:44)

I was so angry. It was great that somebody suggested that I go and see Nigel and talk

A (13:51)

about the Brexit party.

B (13:52)

And then, literally a month later, here I am. I can't believe it.

A (13:57)

And her brother arrives too. By early 2019, Chris Arborne is on the scene and he gives 200 grand. So the. So the equivalent of all that money he's given to the Conservative party over 20 years. Whack in one go. In it goes to Farage. Now, 200 grand may not be that huge to start with, but along with a couple of other donors, actually, that is. That is a fair old whack and it gives the party credibility and it helps them campaign in those European elections. This is May 2019.

B (14:27)

Yeah. And they did rather well, didn't they? Yeah.

A (14:29)

Win it. Who won the elections Yesterday? They are 32% of the vote.

D (14:37)

Do you remember all that stuff? Brexit means Brexit. We're taking back control of our laws, our money and our laws.

A (14:42)

And miles ahead of the Tories, loads of seats in the. In the European Parliament, where they're a kind of wrecking force. And it's basically what does. For Theresa May, it is and will always remain a matter of deep regret

B (14:58)

to me that I have not been able to deliver Brexit. It will be for my successor to seek a way forward that honours the result of the referendum.

A (15:07)

So she hasn't been able to get a Brexit deal done. The Brexit party is terrifying the Tories because they've done so well in these European elections. May resigns.

B (15:15)

I do so with no ill will,

A (15:18)

but with enormous and enduring gratitude to

B (15:21)

have had the opportunity.

A (15:22)

Opportunity to serve the country I love. And we're heading towards Boris.

D (15:28)

Deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn.

A (15:33)

Now, Boris causes election. Right, that snap election, like get Brexit done election.

B (15:37)

Yeah. End of 2019.

A (15:39)

Yeah. We've got to the stage where we have no choice because our parliament is paralyzed. It's been stuck in a rut for three and a half years and I'm afraid our MPs are just refusing time and again to deliver Brexit and honour the mandate of the people. I can. And remember this is the time, if you can remember this, where both Leavers and Remainers still thought they could kind of win the day. You know, there was campaigns for second referendum.

B (16:07)

Yeah. We hadn't yet left.

A (16:09)

We hadn't left the eu and it seemed like all sorts of outcomes were possible. A huge time. And that's When Harborne's money starts to have a real impact, I think he starts to give millions.

B (16:29)

Okay, and you've spoken to people who were close to Farage and who were there in 2019. What did they tell you about the level of Harborne's involvement?

A (16:38)

They called up Gawain Towler. Right. He was very much around.

B (16:40)

Gawaine Towler, right. Yes, I know this guy.

A (16:42)

Yeah, he was Farage's media guy for a long time. His kind of, his kind of communications chief.

B (16:48)

Yeah. Dresses like an English country gent head to toe in tweed, doesn't he? Always smoking a fag.

A (16:52)

Yes, if I think he might be an English country jet. And he, he recalls this time, he was right in the thick of it at that time. And he recalls Harborne turning up and he buys a fridge because there's no fridge, there's campaign headquarters and they need to have gin and tonics. So Halborn arranges that. I think he might also provide a coffee machine.

B (17:14)

Okay. So he's in the UK at the moment.

A (17:16)

He's in the uk so we, we think, we don't know quite when the state status starts or finishes. But, but my understanding is he's a non dom, so there's a tax status you can have if you're rich, where you can spend a certain number of days in the uk, but you can keep some of your wealth kind of out of the tax man's hands, essentially. So he's coming and going from the uk and Gwain would say, you know, he believed in Brexit. I mean, if we're judging him by his actions, he clearly does seem to want Brexit done. Right. He puts an enormous amount of money in during that year of that crucial campaign. So when I was asking about why is Harborne there? And so Gawain says he was excited by it, he was interested in it. He believed in the basic premise that Britain should govern itself. And then he says, I never heard him say, and I want you to have this policy. You've got to remember that the Brexit party only had one policy and that was to have Brexit.

B (18:04)

Okay. So we can certainly say that Chris Harborne wanted to get Brexit done.

A (18:08)

I think that's a fair assumption, but I don't think that's the whole picture either.

B (18:12)

No. And the weird thing I thought from reading your piece is that the Brexit party wasn't the only party that he was donating to in those Boris Johnson years.

A (18:21)

Right, right. And this is where I think we Start to scrutinize the relationship between these donations and the recipients approach to cryptocurrency.

B (18:31)

Yeah.

A (18:32)

So, yeah, 2019 huge sums into the

B (18:35)

Brexit Party after the 2019 general election.

A (18:38)

After the 2019 general election has taken place. And then all donations stop for a while. From Harborne.

B (18:46)

It's Covid, I guess, isn't it?

A (18:48)

We're into Covid then. Yeah. And Farage starts to become very vocal in support for cryptocurrency. Now these, this big pile of legal letters I've got here from various highly reputable British law firms, they all say there is no connection between the donations that Harborne gives. Harborne says this? And the political recipient says this?

B (19:13)

Yeah.

A (19:13)

No connection between donations on the one hand and crypto policy on the other. Nonetheless, even if there is no quid pro quo, you can see that the people who receive this money from Harborne start to adopt very pro crypto positions. So Farage, heading into the. During the pandemic, start to come out and say this is kind of the ultimate lockdown investment from the poorest to

D (19:37)

the richest in Milan. One of the conversations that's going on is about cryptocurrency. The reason is all too obvious. It's that governments are through this pandemic, creating vast amounts of funny money, debasing currencies, and people are scared about what this means.

A (19:53)

He starts to latch on to this rhetoric about crypto being freedom and liberty and big governments locking us up in our houses and so on. And then Farage will later become specifically a very vocal supporter of Tether itself.

D (20:10)

Tether is a stablecoin. Stable coins are the way which money goes from conventional currencies through into cryptocurrencies and back again. Tether is about to be valued as a $500 billion company. You know, stablecoins, crypto, this world is enormous. And I've been urging for years that London should embrace it.

A (20:32)

But before that happens, you've got Boris in power and you've got money going from harbor to the Conservatives once again. And they say they want to make UK a sort of crypto hub. So there is a correlation between people who get Harborne's money and being very pro crypto. There are other reasons to support crypto. It has some very positive uses. There are lots of people who make a good case that crypto is a good thing in some ways, but it's definitely the case that the people who've got Harborne's money become pro crypto.

B (21:03)

And in your magazine piece, there are some previously unpublished pictures of Farage attending Chris Harborne's 60th birthday party back in December 2022. Is that right? And when Farage had supposedly taken a step away from frontline politics. And the party is at the Thai wellness resort that Harborne owns where he prefers to be known as Shakrit and not Chris. And I've got to say, it's pretty much the last place on earth I would expect an unrepentant drinker and smoker to turn up.

A (21:32)

So a source tells me that they, they did witness Farage and company sitting down to a few bottles. Maybe this was kind of like wellness wine, right? Or maybe it was like stronger stuff. I'm not really sure.

B (21:44)

How has Farage explained his presence at this birthday party?

A (21:48)

He says it's just a party. Yeah, he says it's a party. Well, actually he doesn't send anything. We've got a sort of a legal letter that comes from an email address called Legal at Reform. Okay, let me grab it. I got a thickening pile of, of legal letters. Here's the Reform one. So it's basically, yeah, this is just a party. Don't read too much into it. What it certainly isn't is some sort of like political strategy gathering where they're plotting Farage's takeover of the UK. They gather, they go to a birthday, 200 people are there. It's just a birthday party. No political discussions of the nature implied took place. And to suggest otherwise is a complete fabrication.

B (22:26)

Right, okay. But it is a bit hard to believe, isn't it, that Farage would travel halfway around the world to meet a political donor and that they wouldn't talk politics at all.

A (22:34)

I'll tell you what's also interesting about this, about the letter that comes back. It says, this is not a political meeting. Nigel Farage is not even contemplating a return to politics. Then there's no way this could be about Farage's kind of designs to be Prime Minister? Because there aren't any. I'm not sure that's entirely the full picture. You know, just before this trip to Thailand, Farage has written in the Daily Telegraph, just sort of mentioning offhand, by the way, the polling suggests that a Nigel Farage led party could do very well. And he ends it by saying, basically, I haven't given my life to Brexit to sit on the sidelines while it's islands, while it's portrayed. So whether or not he has political discussions or discussions about donations in Thailand with Chris Harborne, he's clearly starting at this point, to contemplate this big return.

B (23:19)

Yeah, okay. And then, so 18 months after the 60th birthday in Thailand, Rishi Sunak stands on the steps at Downing street in the rain, announces a general election. And Farage decides very late in the day, doesn't he, I'm coming back. And they get five seats in Parliament. Did Harborne fund that success?

A (23:36)

No. So he doesn't give any money to anybody. There's no donations to the Conservatives, there's no donations to Reform UK. So Farage wins his seat. 8th try. He hangs around for the King's Speech, and then he's immediately off again to see Donald Trump, his big pal, who has just survived an assassin's bullet that grazed his ear. And he's also about to accept the Republican nomination for his sort of comeback presidential campaign. Farage flies out there. And when Ferrars declares in his register of MPs interests, who paid for that? Who paid the cost of flying him and an aide to America for that trip, £32,000, it's Chris Harbor. And there he is, back on the scene. Okay, a few thousand pounds to start with, but it's going to get much, much bigger. Suddenly, in August last year, August 2025, £9 million. So this is the biggest single donation by a living donor to a British political party ever. Seismic. And Chris Harborne is opening the floodgates of political finance. Three million more. There's been money to fly Farage towards anyway. The Chagos Islands.

D (24:45)

The British government are replying pressure on the president and the government of the Maldives to do everything within their power to stop me getting on that boat and going to betray God's islands.

A (24:57)

Interesting sort of intervention in geopolitics there. Harborne is funding that. So, so, so, so now Harborne really is established as this kind of megadonor.

B (25:12)

Coming up, what is Chris Harborne getting in return for all of these donations?

C (25:31)

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B (27:09)

You've already touched on this, the sort of mystery of what he's getting out of all of this. But I know you have spoken to people who know him and understand a little bit about what makes him tick. What do they think he gets out of all of this?

A (27:23)

So I spoke to a guy called Mark Velacott. He's going to be a reform candidate in these local elections very shortly. And he was also for a long time a close friend of Catherine Harborne. And Mark Vellacott describes Harborne as a very level guy, very gentle guy, and someone who wants to be king of crypto.

B (27:47)

God, the king of crypto.

A (27:48)

He says when he looks at Harborne participating in UK politics, giving money, involved in UK politics, he, he sees that, that he thinks is with an eye, shorter political agenda, but also to advancing the crypto cause. Right. How crypto is going to be treated in the UK and how crypto is going to be treated globally.

B (28:10)

Right. And I know that Harborne denies that this is what motivates his donations. So what do you think is going on here?

A (28:17)

I think what's happening with crypto is an enormous war between the bros, essentially the billionaires and the people who run cryptocurrency and nation states and law enforcement agencies and so on. And especially under Joe Biden there was this sense of like, right, we need to get a grip on this stuff because it's a huge engine of money laundering. I mean crypto, again and again and again it's found to be used for sanctions evasion. The, the Russian war machine makes use of crypto, specifically tethers, tokens. I mean, again and again, North Korean hackers, the Iranian regime, this is of the examples I'm giving are specifically tethered stablecoin. And so there is this huge battle to try to control what is at least partially an enormous new avenue for dirty money to move around the world incognito. Now, obviously, crypto has all sorts of perfectly legitimate uses, as does tether stablecoin. But this is the big battle now in the us. Trump is a big crypto convert. Right. His family is hugely into crypto and they're making loads of money out of it. But I want to thank you all for being here. This is really a big day this afternoon. We take a giant step to cement American dominance of global finance and crypto technology as we sign the landmark Genius Act. The uk, it's in the balance. I would say the UK is one of the few places with the sort of big law enforcement system that could actually try to crack down on these illicit uses of crypto. Indeed, there are investigations going on that involve the illicit use of specifically tether crypto. Is the UK going to try and crack down on crypto or is it going to embrace it the way Trump has done? And Farage's view is very much we embrace it.

B (30:06)

And what's Chris Harborne said when you've gone to him with what you found in your reporting?

A (30:10)

So let me get the stack of the legal letters. So I'm getting the one from Shillings, one of the foremost reputation management law firms. They wrote a letter when I wrote to harbor and saying, can we have an interview? They've said, first of all, they didn't want to give an interview. They said they wouldn't reward my previous coverage, which I think they said it clearly considered to have been critical with an interview. But they do say this. So this is Shillings on behalf of Chris Harborne. Our client has not sought to influence, nor has he influenced any politician to support cryptocurrencies or any other of his business interests. And then there's this. The prime ministers and senior politicians to whom you refer. So the ones like Farage who've received donations are fully capable of making their own informed decisions on matters such as cryptocurrencies.

B (31:00)

And what about Farage himself? What did he say when you went to him?

A (31:05)

So, interestingly, the legal letter we got from Reform, I mean, it says we've got all sorts of things wrong. And I think the crucial point in this is this one. No donor, including Mr. Harborne, has sought or been offered any form of influence, benefit or preferential treatment in connection with donations. So we've got the legal letter, right?

B (31:26)

Yeah.

A (31:27)

But we've also got what Ferrars himself has said when he was asked by a reporter about these donations, these massive donations from Harbor. I can't do. I won't try and do it.

B (31:38)

Don't do his accident.

A (31:39)

No. Does he want anything from me? No, absolutely nothing in return at all. He just happens to think that we've not made the most of Brexit and that we're not getting into the 21st century technologies.

B (31:53)

And, you know, listening to all of this, it does strike me as being a bit rum that a guy who's living in Thailand is allowed to give such huge donations to British political parties when he's not paying most of his taxes.

A (32:08)

Well, Harborne's massive donations have been alarming people in Labour and also people who were just worried about the influence of big money on democratic politics in the uk.

B (32:22)

Yeah. Going in the American direction.

A (32:23)

Right. And what we had very recently is an announcement from Keir Starmer's government that there's going to be this cap, there's going to be a limit of 100 grand, £100,000 on what you can donate if you're an otherwise eligible donor but you live abroad. Probably it boils down to the same question that all these big donors based abroad face, which is, if you want to give big, big money, the kind of money that can change the course of a country, you might have to be prepared to live in it.

B (32:59)

And you've told us already that somebody who knows Harborne says that he aspires to become the king of crypto.

A (33:04)

The king of crypto, yeah.

B (33:06)

So he seems to be operating primarily out of self interest rather than ingrained political ideology, allegiance to one political party or the other. And I just wondered, do you think this could all end in tears for Nigel Farage?

A (33:19)

I think that's so fascinating, you know, is he operating out of self interest? Is he trying to enlighten us all to the wisdom of cryptocurrency that will set it, set us free. Is it about his own bank balance? Is it about an ideology? We don't know. Where does it end with Farage? Again, we don't know that he's shown that he's willing to move to switch his donations between different political parties. I think what's clear is that he's got a vast amount of wealth.

B (33:48)

And lastly, Tom, you said that around two thirds of Reform's donations have come from Harborne. How risky is that for Farage to rely so heavily on one mega donor?

A (33:58)

I think the risks are actually, for us, what the people who really study this stuff, I think, are most concerned about is that this switch in the UK to megadonors and to the increasing influence of a small number of very, very rich people on politics, that doesn't seem the way to keep the oxygen flowing through democracy at what is a very difficult time for democracies. Anyway, I think the risks here are not so much about the fate of one politician as to the fate of the democratic system as a whole.

B (34:27)

Tom, always a pleasure. Thanks for coming in.

A (34:29)

Yeah, likewise. Tears Alan.

B (34:37)

That was Tom Burgess. You can read his magazine piece about Chris Harborne@theguardian.com and that is all for today. This episode was produced by Alex Atak and presented by me, Helen Pidd. Sound design was by Rudy Zagadlo. The executive producer was Humma Khalili. We will be back in your feeds this afternoon with the latest.

A (35:00)

This is the Guardian.

B (35:18)

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