Thursday, July 09, 2026
National Crime Agency asked to look at Reform UK funding
The paper says that, separately to the undisclosed £5m gift provided to the Reform leader, Nigel Farage, by a cryptocurrency billionaire shortly before the 2024 general election being reported to the NCA, banking staff judged that transfers of funds between Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader, a major donor, Fiona Cottrell, and the senior party figure and convicted fraudster George Cottrell, required further investigation:
Suspicious activity reports (SARs) raised by bankers were passed to the NCA for examination.
Tice, via lawyers, threatened to injunct the Guardian to stop it publishing these details.
Without responding to any of the questions put to him, Tice then appears to have shared the allegations contained in the Guardian’s requests for comment with the Telegraph, which wrote them up without credit or contact ahead of publication.
The disclosures have come from a Guardian investigation in which a number of finance industry sources have provided information they believe raises questions over the funding of Reform UK.
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The Guardian understands finance industry figures have raised at least four SARs relating to concerns about transactions involving senior figures in Reform:
* One relates to a £1m donation made to Britain Means Business, a fundraising organisation for Reform UK, before the last general election. Half of the £1m was then transferred by Tice, as director of the company, to Reform UK. Renamed from Leave Means Leave, Britain Means Business is a company that is used to help fund Reform. The £1m seemingly came from the aristocrat and Reform UK donor Fiona Cottrell. In this instance, the Guardian understands bank staff were not satisfied that the funds had ultimately come from her. The NCA has sought help from a foreign partner agency to trace the original source of the funds.
* Two other SARs relate to a loan from George Cottrell to Tice. The loan was made shortly before Tice finalised a property purchase and made a party donation, and was not repaid until after those two transactions were completed, according to sources. George Cottrell is the son of Fiona Cottrell, and is a convicted fraudster, former deputy treasurer of Ukip and close associate of Farage.
* A fourth relates to the £5m gift from the Thailand-based businessman Christopher Harborne to Farage, which was first revealed by the Guardian in April.
Regulated individuals in some sectors, such as accountants, bankers, real estate agents and solicitors, have a legal obligation to submit SARs to the NCA if they have “knowledge or suspicion of money laundering”. There are rules designed to ensure that SARs are sufficiently detailed for the authorities to be able to investigate them.
SARs are not the same as crime reports or proof of wrongdoing, and are usually regarded as markers for law enforcement agencies to take a more rigorous look and potentially investigate.
The money behind Farage and Reform UK is under acute political and public scrutiny. He is being investigated by the parliamentary standards watchdog over the £5m gift, which Farage has variously described as being needed to pay for lifetime security, and also as a reward for “getting Brexit done”. On Tuesday, he resigned from his Clacton seat to trigger a byelection, in which he will stand. However, this move is likely to only pause, rather than close, the investigation and any potential reprimand.
The prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, have led cross-party calls for Farage to “come clean” over his financial affairs.
The filing of the SARs raises questions about whether Electoral Commission rules and the MPs’ code of conduct are being adhered to by Reform, and whether the rules are fit for purpose if, as critics of Farage have suggested, Reform has blurred the boundaries of personal and political finance.
Farage may have resigned to fight a by-election to try and distract attention from these dealings, but they are not going away.
