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Nigel Farage’s record-beating election war chest is being bankrolled by a donor whose fortune is entangled with a major video platform which has hosted Russian state broadcasters supporting Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and an influence operation hatched by Russian intelligence.
Christopher Harborne – the Thailand-based billionaire who has given Reform UK £9 million in cash, making him Britain’s single largest political donor – is already known as a cryptocurrency investor and long-time Farage backer. He is also a major shareholder in the stablecoin company Tether and the British defence firm QinetiQ, which supplies the Ministry of Defence and allied militaries.
What has not been scrutinised until now is how Harborne’s stake in Tether ties his profits to Rumble: a “free speech” video platform that refused to ban Russian state media after the invasion, and has since hosted a Kremlin-backed influence operation exposed by the US Department of Justice.
Byline Times has examined company filings, market disclosures and previous reporting to map the investment chain running from Tether into Rumble. The picture that emerges is of a donor whose financial interests straddle Britain’s defence interests and a platform projecting Russian state propaganda.
The £9 Million Man
In early December, Electoral Commission data confirmed that Harborne had donated £9 million to Reform UK – the largest single political donation in recent British history, eclipsing recent gifts to the Conservative and Labour parties.
Harborne is no stranger to Farage’s projects. Under his Thai name, Chakrit Sakunkrit, he previously bankrolled the Brexit Party with nearly £10 million and also wrote substantial cheques to the Conservatives under Boris Johnson.
Behind that largesse sits a sprawling portfolio. As well as aviation fuel, technology ventures and property, Harborne holds a substantial stake in Tether – the company behind the world’s largest “stablecoin”, a type of cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar.
According to multiple reports drawing on leaked corporate documents, he acquired around a 12% share in Tether’s parent group in the mid-2010s, making him one of its largest private investors. Harborne is not understood to be in any way involved in Tether’s management or operations
Tether has itself been scrutinised by regulators and law enforcement agencies for the way its tokens have been used in money laundering, sanctions evasion and other illicit finance, including schemes said to benefit Russia’s war economy – although there is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Harborne.
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Let’s Get Ready to Rumble
Rumble began life in 2013 as an obscure video-sharing site. For most of the decade it barely registered outside niche online communities. Then came the 2020 US election.
As Donald Trump and senior Republicans railed against “censorship” by Silicon Valley, thousands of MAGA influencers, far-right commentators and pro-Trump media outlets decamped en masse to a platform that promised them something YouTube would not: a home with no gatekeepers.
In 2021, billionaire Peter Thiel and JD Vance’s Narya Capital poured money into that promise, hailing Rumble as the backbone of a “parallel tech ecosystem” for the American right.
Then, in February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine – and Rumble made a decision that set it apart from nearly every major platform in the democratic world.
As the EU, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter moved to block RT and Sputnik, Rumble refused. The company announced it would only act if a court forced its hand.
When France’s media regulator instructed Rumble to comply with EU sanctions, the platform shut off access to its entire service in France rather than remove Kremlin broadcasters. RT livestreams and video archives remained fully accessible on Rumble while disappearing everywhere else.
By September, Rumble became the official cloud infrastructure and video distribution service for Trump’s new platform Truth Social.
Rumble and the Kremlin
In September 2024, the US Department of Justice exposed the company Tenet Media as a covert Kremlin influence operation run by employees of RT with $10 million.
American prosecutors alleged that Russian state staff secretly funded and directed Western commentators to push “hidden Russian government” narratives into public debate. When independent researchers traced the content, they found that Rumble was one of Tenet’s main distribution hubs, hosting hundreds of videos repeating Moscow’s talking points.
According to the Washington DC-based watchdog Media Matters For America, Rumble had promoted Tenet Media multiple times around that time, featuring videos from the company’s channel in its “editor picks” section. The platform’s source code describes its “editor picks” section as “the absolute real best” of Rumble.
A 2025 academic study by researchers at the University of Michigan confirmed more than 560 Tenet podcasts were available on the platform, underscoring Rumble’s role as a core vector for Kremlin-aligned content.
Just three months after the DOJ indictment, on 20 December 2024, Tether disclosed a $775 million “strategic investment” in Rumble, buying more than 103 million shares and catapulting itself into the top tier of the platform’s shareholders.
Only a third of the money went into Rumble’s business; the rest funded a lucrative tender offer for existing investors wishing to cash out.
This deal directly affects Christopher Harborne. By most credible accounts, Harborne holds roughly 12% of Tether’s parent company – an early stake acquired almost a decade ago, long before USDT became a global financial force. Tether’s profits have since exploded.
And because Tether is now deeply tied into Rumble, Harborne’s wealth is now structurally exposed to a single crypto-information ecosystem that keeps Russian state media online, amplified a covert Kremlin propaganda programme, and forms part of Donald Trump’s alternative media infrastructure.
The stronger Tether’s balance sheet looks, the more valuable his 12% slice becomes.
This leaves Harborne’s financial interests squarely aligned with a platform that has chosen to keep Russian state media online and has been used in a Kremlin influence operation run by Russian intelligence.
Christopher Harborne did not respond to requests for comment.
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The Conflict of Interest
Harborne is also the largest private shareholder in QinetiQ, the defence and security firm that supplies advanced technology, testing and training services to the Ministry of Defence, NATO and allied militaries. QinetiQ’s US division has provided TALON bomb-disposal robots to Ukraine as part of American aid packages, and in 2025 the MoD signed a proof-of-concept programme with Babcock and QinetiQ to help Ukrainian forces 3D-print battlefield components.
These sit alongside a recently extended £1.5 billion Long Term Partnering Agreement for test and evaluation work, and an £80 million mission-data and electronic-warfare contract.
There is no allegation of wrongdoing by Harborne. But the position is stark: he stands to benefit financially both as a major MoD contractor supporting Ukraine’s defence and from an investment structure that sustains a platform hosting a Kremlin influence operation.
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: “National security is our number one priority, and every contract is rigorously assessed to safeguard the UK’s strategic interests.”
Calls for scrutiny are now emerging in Westminster.
Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have asked the Electoral Commission to investigate Reform UK after highlighting the timing of recent events: Christopher Harborne’s £9 million donation was followed shortly afterwards by Nigel Farage publicly praising Tether, the very company in which Harborne is a major investor. Labour says the sequence raises “serious questions”, while the Lib Dems warn of a potential conflict of interest if the party leader is promoting the commercial interests of his biggest donor.
Labour MP Phil Brickell, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Anti-Corruption and Responsible Tax told Byline Times that the Government should legislate to tackle the issue of crypto donations in UK politics.
“There is a bigger question here about how our politics is funded. I don’t want to see us turn into the US where money talks more than anything else”, he said.
The deeper structural conflict uncovered by this investigation is that Harborne’s Tether stake ties him to a Trump administration-backed investment chain sustaining a platform hosting Kremlin-directed propaganda.
That is a conflict of interest that remains entirely unknown to most voters – even as it bankrolls the party asking for their trust.