Last week, the Electoral Commission published new data on donations to political parties covering the second quarter of this year. They reveal that, from April to June, Reform UK continued to be funded by donors with crypto interests and offshore links.
Reform and its leader Nigel Farage spent much of last year busily promoting the interests of the crypto industry.
The party unveiled new legislation it would introduce if in government to slash capital gains tax on crypto assets and Farage promised to be the industry’s champion. “Reform’s Britain will lead the digital money revolution,” was the headline of an article he wrote for City AM back in November.
It’s unsurprising, then, that Reform’s two most generous benefactors are crypto billionaires. Christopher Harborne – the man behind the £5 million which dropped into Farage’s bank account in early 2024 – has given £15 million and earlier this year the party received £4 million from Ben Delo, co-founder of the trillion-dollar cryptocurrency exchange platform BitMEX.
The latest data shows that Delo has continued his support for Farage’s party, handing over another £4 million in April and May.
This means that Reform has now received more from Delo than the US government did in 2022, when he agreed to pay $10 million (around £7.4 million at the time) after pleading guilty to violating the Banking Secrecy Act by failing to operate adequate anti-money laundering controls at BitMex. Delo, who was also sentenced to 30 months of probation, was pardoned by Donald Trump in March 2025.
Delo wasn’t the only person with links to crypto who donated to the party in the second quarter of this year.
Maria Rost, understood to be the wife of US crypto investor John Rost, gave £15,000 in June, bringing the total she has given Reform since July 2025 to £145,000. Meanwhile, Daniel Leonard Masters – who appears to be a self-described “bitcoin pioneer”, chairman of crypto investment vehicle CoinShares, and director of crypto payment solutions firm SatoshiPay – donated £25,000 in April.
In October, Reform had to return a £10,000 donation it received from a ‘Daniel Masters’ on the grounds of him being an impermissible donor. We asked Reform whether this was the same person who donated in April and if this meant he was now a permissible donor, but did not receive a response.
Just as Reform is still benefiting from the generosity of crypto billionaires, it is also continues to be fueled by donors with offshore links. Indeed, its latest benefactors include Roger Nagioff – a former Lehman Brothers banker who now appears to live in Monaco and gave the party £100,000 on 14 May – as well three companies owned by people or entities based abroad.
On 30 June, the party received £50,000 from BMJ Waste Ltd, a company which specialises in the “collection of non-hazardous waste”, according to its description on Companies House, and is owned by a Cyprus-based outfit called Forumstatus Ltd. BMJ Waste Ltd’s latest accounts, for the year to July 2025, show that it had net assets of just £1,351.
The same month, Reform was handed £20,000 by UK Sotheby’s International Realty, the luxury property agency used by Reform’s honorary treasurer Nick Candy, which comes on top of the £100,000 it gave the party last August. Owned by the UAE-based businessman George Azar, the company has donated to Reform despite making heavy losses, totalling more than £17 million in 2023 and 2024 (the most recent for which data is available).
This donation was made to Reform on 9 June, exactly a week after an investigation by Bloomberg revealed that employees and former employees of the property agency have accused George Azar of sexual misconduct – something he denies.
The party received another £20,000 cheque from Nova Venture Holdings Limited, a company owned by American businessman Jacques Tohme, who describes himself as an “energy investor” and is the managing partner of Samos Energy, a private investment firm with interests in the oil and gas sector. Tohme’s company previously gave Reform £50,000 in January last year.
Reform’s latest donors also include a couple of familiar names.
The first is Greybull Capital, which gave £14,000 in April having already donated £100,000 in June 2025. Greybull is a controversial investment firm which has extracted money from a number of struggling firms. Most notably, it oversaw the collapse of British Steel, Britain’s second largest steelworks, into liquidation in 2019, after buying it for just £1 in 2016 and charging £20 million a year in fees and interest.
The other is Gary Mond, chairman of the Reform Jewish Alliance, who donated £12,000 in April, bringing the total amount he has given the party to nearly £30,000. In January 2022, Mond had to resign as vice-president of the Board of Deputies after it emerged he had made anti-Muslim comments on social media.
In response to a post about a possible increase in the number of Muslim MPs, Mond wrote: “When this happens – and the odds are that it will – the Britain that we knew will have gone forever.” He also said that “all civilisation” is “at war with Islam” and liked posts by the American far-right activist Pamela Geller. Concerningly, such Islamophobia appears commonplace in Reform.
Reform was contacted for comment, but did not respond.
Prefer to listen? Click the play button to hear the audio version. Harry Shukman Reform UK is staffed by oddballs and enigmas, but none odder…
