The UK’s financial regulator has confirmed it cannot yet fully investigate claims about Nigel Farage’s links to crypto billionaires, after Labour referred the Reform leader over his public advocacy for cryptocurrency and stablecoins.
The Financial Conduct Authority told the i Paper that cryptoassets will not be “fully within our regulatory regime” until October 2027, leaving a significant gap in its ability to act on the complaint lodged by Labour Party chair Anna Turley. The regulator did confirm, however, that it is considering whether it can investigate the financial promotion angle of Labour’s complaint, which would cover cryptocurrency.
The FCA is required to respond to Turley’s letter within fifteen days.
What Labour is alleging
In her letter to the FCA, Turley set out a pattern of behaviour that she argued raises serious questions about the relationship between Farage’s political advocacy and his financial interests. “He has publicly praised the stablecoin Tether, attacked measures that could limit the growth of private stablecoins, and argued that the United Kingdom should become a global centre for cryptoasset activity,” she wrote.
“At the same time, he and his political party are both being funded directly by people with financial interests in cryptocurrencies.”
The full scale of those financial relationships has emerged over several months of reporting. Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based businessman and significant shareholder in Tether, one of the world’s largest stablecoins, has donated more than twenty-two million pounds to Reform. Farage himself has invested two-hundred-and-fifteen thousand pounds in crypto firm Stack BTC, which purchased two million pounds in bitcoin earlier this year. He has received seventy-two thousand pounds in gifts or benefits from Harborne, as well as thirty thousand pounds in earnings from Blockworks, a crypto data and software platform.
The Bank of England lobbying
Labour’s referral follows reports that Farage used a private meeting with Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey to urge him to drop plans for a state-run digital currency, which could have been costly for Harborne’s interests in private stablecoins. Farage himself said he was “prepared to go to prison” to stop the digital pound, a characteristically dramatic framing that nonetheless drew attention to the directness of his lobbying on behalf of a donor’s financial interests.
The wider standards picture
The FCA referral is far from the only formal investigation Farage is facing. He is currently being investigated by the Parliamentary Standards Commission over whether he broke parliamentary rules by failing to declare a five-million-pound gift from Harborne. A finding against him could trigger a suspension and a Clacton by-election.
Farage has repeatedly insisted the payment was an unconditional gift given before he became an MP, and that it was needed to fund private security. But when the BBC’s Sally Nugent asked him about how the money had been spent, he told her it was “not the public’s business.” He later told LBC: “I can do what I want with it. I can put it on the horses.”
The watchdog has already ruled that Farage breached MPs’ rules seventeen times by failing to register three-hundred-and-eighty-four thousand pounds in earnings.
Reform’s crypto policy agenda
The policies Reform is considering in the cryptocurrency space are extensive. They include making bitcoin part of the UK’s official reserves, allowing tax payments to be made in cryptocurrencies, and lowering capital gains tax on crypto sales. Economists have previously warned that those policies would enrich bitcoin and crypto investors while posing significant risks to the UK economy and leaving taxpayers exposed.
A Reform spokesperson said: “Reform UK’s Cryptoassets and Digital Finance Bill represents international best practice in a range of areas and contains robust safeguards against abuse.”
The mystery of who Christopher Harborne is and what he wants from British politics remains one of the most consequential unanswered questions in UK public life. The FCA’s confirmation that it cannot fully investigate until 2027 means the public may be waiting some time for a regulatory answer.
