The far-right Reform UK party, led by the firebrand populist Nigel Farage, is on the rise, doubling down on calls for tougher border controls and anti-immigration rhetoric. But a look at its finances tells a different story, with money flowing across borders.

While Reform UK says it aims to strengthen the rule of law by prioritising parliamentary sovereignty, cutting immigration, and reducing the influence of international bodies, many of its financial backers, political relationships and ideological allies extend beyond the United Kingdom and into international networks.

Within this network is a small number of individual donors, including its largest backer, Thailand-based crypto investor Christopher Harborne.

Farage himself is a global networker.

In December, he flew to Abu Dhabi at the expense of the United Arab Emirates to attend events and meet officials, despite building a political brand centred on opposition to immigration from regions such as the Middle East.

Are these payments legal?

The UK political finance system allows unlimited donations on the condition of openness, Sam Power, an expert in political financing, electoral regulation and corruption at the University of Bristol, told Al Jazeera, noting that “anybody can donate as much as they want as long as they’re permissible”.

While transparency was meant to balance this freedom, in practice, with opaque donations, gifts, and weak lobbying rules undermining scrutiny, the system is “no longer fit for purpose in British electoral law”, he said.

Duncan Hames, director of policy, Transparency International UK, said in a statement that British democracy is becoming “a plaything for the super-rich”.

“Political parties are growing ever more dependent on a tiny number of mega-donors, and the impact of that money on our politics is clear: it buys privileged access, political influence, and even seats in the House of Lords,” he said.

Donations have long been a function of the British political system, Power explained, but what Reform UK has done is that it has “supercharged” the scale.

“British politics has always had a bit of a representation problem, in the sense that a small number of wealthy people have an outsized influence, but we have never seen the number this small and the money this big,” Hames said.

Let’s take a deeper look at Reform UK’s global network.

Donations from abroad

Reform UK relies heavily on donations, about two-thirds of which come from wealthy individuals.

At the heart of this set-up sits Harborne, a British-Thai billionaire businessman who is currently the largest single donor to a UK political party in history, having contributed more than 22 million pounds ($30m) to Reform.

In 2025 alone, he donated 12 million pounds ($16.3m).

His relationship with Farage has also been shrouded in controversy. The Guardian recently revealed Reform UK’s leader had received a 5 million-pound ($6.8m) gift from Harborne that was not initially declared in early 2024, weeks before Farage announced his bid to become an MP and run in Clacton.

Under House of Commons rules, new MPs must register all “registrable benefits” received in the 12 months before their election. The Conservative Party referred Farage to the parliamentary standards commissioner for investigation, questioning why such a large sum was hidden from the public.

Farage said the money was gifted to him “so that I would be safe and secure for the rest of my life”.

Harborne has made much of his fortune from his 12 percent stake in Tether, a cryptocurrency that Farage now regularly promotes on media appearances.

Farage’s trips to Abu Dhabi, Maldives

In December, the UAE paid approximately 1,000 pounds ($1,360) for Farage to visit Abu Dhabi and forked out $9,000 for Paddock passes at the 2025 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, as shown in the UK Parliament Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

The Financial Times, quoting people familiar with the matter, reported Reform UK treasurer Nick Candy had arranged the trip as the UAE’s leadership “was keen to speak with Reform owing to a shared opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood”.

Harborne is also estimated to have spent an estimated 25,000 pounds ($33,900) flying Farage out to the Maldives for a three-day trip that the Reform UK leader listed as a “humanitarian aid mission”.

At the time of publishing, Reform had not responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Paid speaking events abroad

Farage is also flown around the world to speak at various events.

In November, Bassim Haidar, a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire entrepreneur and prominent donor to Reform UK, spent about 55,000 pounds ($74,528) to fly out Farage and two of his aides to the United States for a “speaking engagement and charity event”, according to the register.

Haidar uses Dubai as his primary business headquarters, while his main European residential base is in Greece.

In February 2025, GB News, a media outlet which has produced biased coverage about Muslims according to a recent study, paid Farage 7,924 pounds ($10,737) to cover the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual gathering of conservatives in the US, organised by the American Conservative Union, at which he also held a speech. CPAC covered the cost of his accommodation.

Will anything change?

Reform UK has committed to doing the “bare minimum to comply with electoral law on transparency”, Power said. The party appears “uninterested in giving you information unless they are absolutely forced to”, a trend he expects to continue.

However, small changes in the law are being applied.

After Harborne’s gift was revealed, the UK government unveiled a planned 100,000-pound ($135,611) cap on how much British citizens living abroad could donate in a year, as well as a temporary ban on all donations made in cryptocurrencies.

Power said ultimately, the system of political donations in the UK will not halt overnight, but some form of compromise needs to be met.

He proposed a “democracy backstop” to cap donations at 1 million pounds ($1.35m).

“It just moves us towards just taking the poison out a little bit,” he said.