The Troubled Firms That Gave Reform UK Tens of Thousands of Pounds Whilst on the Brink of Collapse

At least seven firms have collectively donated £485,000 to Reform UK while on the brink of being dissolved, struck off, or otherwise in apparent distress, Byline Times analysis has found.

The findings pose fresh questions for Reform UK and its leader Nigel Farage, who is currently being investigated by parliament’s standards commissioner over an undeclared £5 million donation from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne before he became MP.

An investigation by this outlet suggests a pattern of companies donating to Nigel Farage’s party while facing concerns over their finances or record-keeping.

Byline Times has analysed Reform UK’s donations as well as Companies House records, showing that a firm called FK Building Limited joined Reform’s list of major corporate donors last October. The building company, based in Harrogate, is controlled by dad-and-son duo Francis Anthony Keenan and (father) Francis Keenan.

The construction outfit received a notice for compulsory strike-off by the company regulator on 26 August 2025. That was discontinued on 7 October 2025 after the company finally filed its late accounts.

Just a day after enforcement action was called off, the firm donated £100,000 to Reform UK. This micro-company was therefore on the verge of being struck off right around the time it was funding a major political donation.

Another company, Volare Aviation Ltd, donated £30,000 to Reform UK this February, a non-cash gift providing private flights for the party. The Kidlington private-jet operator’s accounts to December 2024 are more than a year overdue (they were meant to be filed by 30 November 2025). In other words, the firm was donating tens of thousands to Reform in-kind while having failed to file its legally-required accounts.

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Dissolved, Liquidated, or in Deficit

Contractor UK Limited, run by French national Olivier Martin, donated £20,000 to Reform in 2021. It was dissolved via compulsory strike-off in February 2026, with net assets of just £286 following a transfer of assets to its subsidiary Free-Work Group Limited, also controlled by Mr Martin. While Free-Work’s last accounts, filed for the year 2023, list assets of nearly £650,000, that company is now also in liquidation.

Albany Walk Limited, which donated £15,000 to Nigel Farage’s party in 2019, began a liquidation process in 2022. It was dissolved in July 2024. The year of the donation, company accounts listed net liabilities (the shareholder deficit) of £678,294. For the final year that it filed accounts (year to September 2021), that had risen to £725,732.

The company was formerly run by American hedge fund manager Lisa Marie Rowland. She is the widow of former Brexit Party MEP and businessman Robert Rowland.

Atmospheric Studios Limited, behind two £10,000 donations on the same day in 2021, was dissolved in October 2025, and its last accounts from 2023 show liabilities of more than £1.3 million.

That firm was controlled by Mesmerise Global, a leisure and entertainment software development company run by investor and entrepreneur Daglar Cizmeci, who Companies House lists as an American national. Mesmerise currently has net liabilities, as of December 2024, of more than £21.8 million.

‘Management consultancy’ firm R20 Advisory Limited gave £100,000 to Reform in 2025 but has no website, phone number, and little public profile. The apparently loss-making firm still appears to be in breach of company law for failing to file its most recent accounts on time, which were due on 31st May 2026. The company was founded in 2002 by property tycoon Robert Tchenguiz, formerly a Conservative donor.

Another firm, Interior Architecture Landscape Ltd, has faced three rounds of compulsory strike-off action from the regulator since early 2024. The latest was discontinued after just a day at the end of March. It is still weeks overdue in filing its legally-required confirmation statement, setting out who owns shares in the firm.

Company accounts dated January 2025 showed it had cash reserves of just £81,432, yet still went on to donate £200,000 to Reform.

And corporate records analysed by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project show that the company had unpaid tax debt of over £218,000 last year. A spokesperson for Interior Architecture Landscape told Byline Times it has now dealt with the HMRC debt, which it described as a “prolonged dispute.”

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More Questions

Not included in the total tally is CA Kent Limited, a company which bought and sold its own real estate, and which entered a voluntary liquidation process this April. Liquidators say they are satisfied the company will be able to pay its debts in full within a year of winding-up proceedings starting. The company donated £20,000 to Reform in May 2024.

Another firm, Century Capital Partners, was behind £25,000 in donations to Reform in January 2025. Established by British entrepreneur Paul Munford, the firm was a mortgage provider offering short-term bridging loans to London’s rich and famous clientele.

Munford quit as a director of the firm on 2nd February this year, before the firm formally fell into administration a week later. On 16th February the firm’s auditors resigned, citing “matters relating to the existence of significant outstanding fees.” In April, the Financial Times reported that two of the firm’s lending vehicles had provided loans without the required anti-money laundering registrations being in place.

The total figure also does not include companies formerly owned and operated by hedge-fund manager Crispin Odey, who donated £10,000 to Reform in 2023. Odey Asset Management, Brook Asset Management, and Odey Wealth Management, which is based in the tax haven of Guernsey, are all reportedly shutting down operations following a string of sexual assault allegations against Odey (which he claims are untrue).

Odey was fined £1.8 million and banned from the financial services industry in 2025, after the Financial Conduct Authority found that he had displayed a “lack of integrity” by attempting to frustrate investigations into his hedge fund and the harassment allegations. Odey is fighting the ban and fine via a legal challenge.

In April 2026 it was reported that he had dropped a £79 million libel case against the Financial Times over their printing of the sexual assault and rape claims made against him. He has, as well as dropping the libel battle, also decided to settle out of court personal injury claims made against him by some of the women who have accused him.

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‘Seriously Undermines Democratic Integrity’

Under current electoral law, a company is only a permissible donor if it is registered and incorporated in the UK and ‘carrying on business’ in the UK. A shell company that isn’t really trading, or one being struck off for non-filing of required accounts, raises the question of whether it was a permissible source at all, though Byline Times has found no confirmation of any illegality.

However, there are proposals under Labour’s current Representation of the People Bill to tighten the law further. While not retrospective, calls to stop companies donating more than their cash reserves, or giving large sums while late filing legally-required Companies House documentation, would have put some of these firms in breach had they been in place at the time.

Tim Picton, senior advocacy adviser at Spotlight on Corruption, told Byline Times: “Alarmingly, it is becoming a more common practice for political parties to receive donations from companies in financial difficulties or on the brink of collapse. We have to ask, how and why are companies in financial peril choosing to donate money they don’t have to a political party?

“As well as wider harms to our economy, in some cases, this could lead to unpaid taxes being withheld and even illicit finance entering and polluting our political finance system.”

Picton added that the problem “seriously undermines our democratic integrity.”

Spotlight on Corruption is calling for the Government to “urgently strengthen” its current proposals in the Representation of the People Bill.

“We must have rules that companies can only make donations if they are in profit, and that donors declare that their money has not come from the proceeds of crime,” he said.

The companies named here were approached for comment where this was possible.

Interior Architecture Landscape Limited told this outlet that its donations to Reform were “lawful, permissible and fully compliant with the applicable electoral legislation,” and was a “commercial decision because the company’s management considered that its policies would benefit the sectors in which the company operates.”

The firm said it was “a UK-incorporated company that has carried on legitimate business activities in the United Kingdom since its incorporation in 2013.”

“The company has provided design, interior architecture, contract management and property management services for more than a decade. The donations were made by the company from the proceeds of its commercial contracts at the relevant time,” a spokesperson said.

On having potentially faced closure over unpaid taxes, the spokesperson added: “Whilst we do not intend to comment further on the short-lived matter with HMRC, the liability arose from a prolonged dispute between the parties. That matter was resolved over a year ago and this is reflected in publicly available records.”

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