Who is Christopher Harborne, the new mega-donor of Reform UK and a cryptocurrency billionaire?

When it was discovered that Christopher Harborne had donated £9 million to Nigel Farage's Reform UK, he became well-known

How was his fortune earned?

In Highclere, Hampshire, a light aircraft crashed into a garden in 2008. The homeowners considered themselves fortunate to have survived, as did Christopher Harborne, the pilot. According to the Financial Times, a plane carrying Nigel Farage unexpectedly crashed to the ground two years later after becoming entangled in a banner while in flight. "The two men were hurt, but they both got better. And both are currently attempting to topple the political system in Britain. A "

Farage is rarely spotted in public with Reform UK's new mega-donor, a Thai aviation entrepreneur turned cryptocurrency tycoon. He doesn't make a big deal. However, he had remained a covert supporter of Farage long before he coughed up a record 9 million in a donation that was made public this week. According to The New Statesman, he set up shop in the Brexit Party's campaign headquarters prior to the 2019 European elections, bringing in a coffee maker, gin, tonic, and limes, as well as a few "decent tumblers."

Ironically, the party became the largest national party in the European Parliament that year due to public support for a hard Brexit in the UK. Harborne now fully supports Farage's attempt to pull off the same feat at Westminster. Right now, Farage's biggest obstacle is disputing media allegations that he was a racist bully in school. However, according to one associate, the "slightly geeky" Cambridge engineering graduate views political issues more as "a mathematical equation that is producing the wrong answer."

Christopher Harborne became wealthy from his early cryptocurrency wager.

Harborne, who is in his early 60s, was born in Britain but has lived and worked in Thailand for more than 20 years. He has a joint nationality and goes by Chakrit Sakunkrit in Thai. One senior Reform member characterizes him as "a merchant adventurer with a great belief in this country," adding, "There's a romantic side to him."

Others, however, have questioned the transparency of an international business empire that now owns a sizable portion of the UK defense company QinetiQ, as well as a significant stake in Tether, the largest stablecoin, and its sister cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex. Harborne possesses certain assets under his Thai alter ego and others under his English name.

According to CoinDesk, he and his aviation fuel company, AML Global, won a defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal last year for making "false accusations of fraud, money laundering and financing terrorism" in a 2023 article looking at businesses associated with Tether. According to the ruling, "when he became a naturalised Thai citizen, he was required to adopt a Thai name" for legal purposes.

According to The New Statesman, Harborne worked as a consultant for McKinsey in the late 1980s before assuming management roles at companies like Walkers and PepsiCo. After registering AML Global in Thailand in 2003, Harborne went on to establish the Sherriff Global Group, which engages in private aircraft trading, among other activities. AML would later secure significant contracts with the US government. However, according to the ft\., Harborn's "early bet on cryptocurrencies" was what truly sealed his fortune. He was involved when Ethereum first launched in 2014 at a price of about £0.30 per token, which has since skyrocketed to about £3,300.

In the Reform movement, Harborne has his critics. When Harborne donated £1.5 million to the Conservative party in 2022 and £1 million to Boris Johnson's private office following his resignation as Tory leader, Ben Habib, the founder of the hard-right Advance UK party, became enraged. "I think it's terrible; Harborne is involved in every aspect of the industry. However, The Times reports that Farage now has money to fight the local elections in April because of his longtime "silent donor." "He must defeat his adolescent self. A "