The ‘Money Launderers Dream’: Who Is Really Bankrolling Nigel Farage?

Why are crypto billionaires, tax-avoiding media organisations and the employees of foreign oligarchs really putting their money into Reform UK?

Who is really bankrolling Reform UK? In previous eras this would be an easy question to answer. A quick look at the Electoral Commission’s register would tell you the names of any individuals or organisations funding political parties in the UK.

Yet with Nigel Farage’s party the question is now much more difficult to answer.

To start with, Reform appear to be going to great lengths to obscure the actual sources of their funding.

Their decision to accept cryptocurrency donations has made it all but impossible to trace its origins.

And while the Government did recently ban such donations, a loophole in the law has allowed Reform to continue taking them, as long as they convert them into cash first.

This really matters when you consider who has already declared that they are funding Farage’s party.

Among the party’s biggest declared donors is the Crypto billionaire Ben Delo, who was handed a fawning spread in the Telegraph this week to explain why he is giving £4 million to the party.

However, while the paper repeatedly refers to Delo as a “philanthropist” what is not mentioned in the piece, until very briefly in the final paragraphs, is that Delo is a convicted criminal who pled guilty to violating money laundering protections in the United States, before being pardoned by Donald Trump.

According to the court judgement, Delo agreed to pay a $10 million fine for what was described as “wilfully” breaking the law with his BitMex platform, which the court found “was in effect a money laundering platform.”

Delo isn’t the only crypto donor to bankroll the party.