Former Reform deputy leader says he thinks Christopher Harborne donated ‘far more’ to Farage’s Brexit Party than reported £10 million
Ben Habib claims that Harborne donated far more in 2019 than has been made public
Ben Habib, the former deputy leader of Reform, has said that he thinks crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne donated “far more” to the Brexit Party in 2019 than has been reported.
Speaking to the Observer and the Rest is Politics in a new series ‘Who funds Reform’, Habib said he believes Harborne donated more than the £10 million that has been made public.
The Brexit Party was founded in late 2018 by Nigel Farage and Catherine Blaiklock to “get Brexit done” and ensure Britain withdrew from the European Union.
Habib said he thinks the true figure that the Thailand-based crypto billionaire donated in the six to nine month period that the Brexit Party functioned was around £14 million.
He has also alleged that Harborne paid Boris Johnson and Farage £1 million each before the 2019 general election, to effectively rig the election in favour of Johnson.
The former Tory donor, who is now leader of Advance UK, said he was “suspicious” of Harborne’s generosity at the time, and that when he first met him, “how much more considerably rich he was than I am”.
The episode places Habib’s claim in the context of Brexit Party’s opaque 2019 accounts, which recorded £17.2 million in donations.
They recorded nearly £19 million in expenditure and around £7 million as “other expenditure”, with little public detail on where all the money came from or how it was spent.
A source also told the Observer that when they visited the Brexit Party offices during the run-up to the 2019 European elections, it seemed as though Harborne was there full-time. The source said he had a desk and was “working on the algorithms”.
Harborne has since become the largest financial backer of the successor to the Brexit Party, Reform, donating £9 million and £3 million to the party in 2025.
The crypto investor also gave Farage a £5 million gift shortly before the 2024 general election, which the Reform leader failed to declare and which only recently came to light.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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