Money-launderer secretly funded Farage’s operation
A convicted fraudster secretly funded Nigel Farage's staff, security and housing before he became an MP, the Sunday Times has revealed.
Clacton voters were sold a man of the people. What they got, according to a Sunday Times report published on 5 July, was an MP whose staff, security and housing were quietly paid for by a convicted fraudster.
George Cottrell, a longtime aide to Nigel Farage, recruited and paid three staff to run Farage’s social media before the 2024 election and offered him the use of a five-storey Georgian townhouse near Buckingham Palace, the paper reported. Cottrell also funded security and drivers. Farage declared only one benefit from Cottrell on entering Parliament: roughly £9,200 for travel to a conference in Belgium.
Cottrell was jailed for eight months in the United States in 2017 after admitting wire fraud, having offered to launder money for federal agents posing as drug dealers. He now runs a consultancy called Geostrategy and published a book titled *How to Launder Money* in February this year. He was introduced to Farage by his uncle, Lord Hesketh, a former UKIP treasurer.
A pattern, not an isolated gift
The Liberal Democrats have written to the parliamentary standards commissioner, Daniel Greenberg, asking him to fold the Cottrell payments into his existing inquiry. That inquiry already covers an undeclared £5m personal gift from Christopher Harborne, the Tether crypto billionaire who has given Reform UK and Farage more than £22m since 2024, roughly two-thirds of everything the party has raised. Farage used part of the £5m to buy a £1.4m house in cash and has said he will spend the rest “on Ferraris” if he wants.
A third complaint, filed on 2 July by Labour MP Phil Brickell, asks Greenberg to examine whether Farage lobbied the Bank of England against a digital pound and a stablecoin ownership cap, both of which would benefit Harborne, in the same period Harborne’s donations arrived.
Robert Jenrick, Reform’s Treasury spokesperson, said Cottrell is “an old friend” with “no formal role” and that the gifts predate Farage’s time as an MP, so fell outside the disclosure rules. That defence has real force: the rules in place at the time exempted gifts that could not reasonably be thought to relate to political activity, and Greenberg has not yet ruled on any of it. Farage called the Sunday Times report an “establishment hit job” and says he is considering suing.
Baroness Margaret Hodge said the allegations “raise questions that everybody involved… need to need to answer.” None of this proves a bought policy. But a party that built itself on being for the left behind is bankrolled by a Thailand-based crypto billionaire and a money-launderer, while its leader charges £22,500 an hour to promote a gold dealer. The voters in Clacton are still waiting to hear what they get out of it.
