Read Our Monthly Magazine
And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system
In last week’s Channel 4 News and Verbatim exposé, which filmed senior Reform figures apparently encouraging foreign donations, the party’s head of policy, James Orr, was caught on camera saying: “we just don’t have British resident donors.”
New Byline Times scrutiny of Reform’s declared donations tests that claim against the record. Of the £17.09 million in donations and public funds recorded by the Electoral Commission for the second quarter (Q2) of 2026, Reform UK accounted for nearly a third – some £5.4 million, more than any other party.
Of that £5.4 million, just over 87% by value came from donors with links – through business interests or personal residence – to tax havens and comparable low-tax jurisdictions, or from people and companies based abroad. There is no suggestion of law-breaking through these donations.
Donors with tax-haven and offshore links alone account for 83% of Reform’s Q2 income. A further handful of companies whose controlling shareholders or owners are based overseas takes the total to 87%.
Some of those donors appear in the Offshore Leaks database maintained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which holds records on more than 810,000 offshore companies, foundations and trusts drawn from the Pandora Papers, Paradise Papers, Bahamas Leaks, Panama Papers and Offshore Leaks investigations into people linked to using offshore entities. Inclusion in the database is not in itself an indication of wrongdoing, and offshore structures are used for purposes other than minimising tax bills.
ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE
Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account.
We’re not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe.
Among those featured, and the individual comprising the lion’s share of Reform’s Q2 income is Ben Delo, co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, who gave £4 million across two donations in April and May. Delo, who was convicted in the United States over anti-money-laundering failures at BitMEX and later pardoned by Donald Trump, had already given the party a substantial sum in the first quarter of 2026. The two tranches make him Reform’s second most generous donor since 2019, behind fellow crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.
Delo is unlikely to be caught by the Government’s £100,000 annual cap on donations from overseas voters, as he is reportedly in the process of moving back to the UK after a decade resident in Hong Kong.
Reform’s second-largest donor in the quarter was the multi-millionaire businessman Bassim Haidar, who gave £192,000 between April and June, taking his total contributions to the party to nearly £700,000. Haidar’s nationality is listed as Irish at Companies House.
He told the Telegraph in November 2024 that he had left Britain over what he described as a punitive tax regime, and that he would split his time between Greece and Dubai. He later told Byline Times that he planned to leave “sometime in the future, not determined yet” – and he remains listed at a London address and on the UK electoral register, the condition that makes his donations permissible in the first place.
Reform in Q2 also declared £14,157 from ‘Investors in Private Capital Limited’, which is ultimately owned by a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. The company previously donated £100,000 to Reform in 2025.
Two further corporate donors to have contributed this quarter have offshore parentage or dealings: BMJ Waste Ltd, which donated £50,000, is ultimately owned by a firm based in Cyprus, and Greybull Capital, which donated a further £14,000, has made use of holding companies in Jersey, though the firm says it has paid its UK tax. Greybull also donated £100,000 to Reform in 2025.
Don’t miss a story
Three more donors – Eldridge Capital Management Services (UK) Limited (in the case of its parent company), Nova Venture Holdings and Flow Lloyds Holdco Limited – have persons with significant control resident overseas: in the United States in the first two cases, and in Italy in the third.
The party received £100,000 from Johan Christofferson, a partner at Christofferson, Robb & Co (CRC), whose name appears in the Offshore Leaks database as a shareholder in several Cayman-based firms under th