Police probe reform’s £500,000 from fraudster’s mother
Met launches a reform party donations investigation into £500,000 from a fraudster's mother, weeks before voters go to Clacton without knowing who really funds the party.
Clacton’s voters go to the polls on 6 August to fill the seat Nigel Farage just quit, and they will do it without knowing who really bankrolled the party asking for their cross. The Metropolitan Police confirmed on Thursday that its Special Enquiry Team has opened a reform party donations investigation into £500,000 given to Reform UK by Fiona Cottrell, mother of a convicted fraudster, weeks before the last general election.
Two people have been interviewed under caution. Nobody has been arrested. The force says it sought early advice from the Crown Prosecution Service before proceeding.
The reform party donations investigation began with a regulator’s referral
The inquiry opened in February 2025 after the Electoral Commission referred the matter to police, examining alleged offences under Section 61 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which covers concealing or disguising the true source of a donation. Two payments of £250,000 each entered Reform’s accounts on 9 May and 29 May 2024. Fiona Cottrell is understood to be of relatively modest means, yet Guardian reporting puts her total giving to Reform and its fundraising vehicle, Britain Means Business, at £1.75m. No offence has been proven and nobody has been charged. Reform says no party officials have been contacted by police.
A second, separate flow of money sits alongside it. Bankers reported a roughly £1m transfer from Cottrell to Britain Means Business, the company run by Reform deputy leader Richard Tice, to the National Crime Agency, which has been unable to trace where the money originated. Half a million pounds of it reached Reform’s coffers before polling day.
Who the money belongs to
Fiona Cottrell’s son, George Cottrell, was jailed in the United States in 2017 for wire fraud after offering money-laundering services on the dark web, and later wrote a book titled How to Launder Money. The Sunday Times has reported he paid for Farage’s social media staff and security before the 2024 election, benefits that went undeclared once Farage took his seat. He is said to have called himself Farage’s “chief of staff”; Reform says he has never held an official role. He lives in Montenegro, and his lawyers insist he is a permissible donor without explaining how. He disputes the Sunday Times’ account.
None of this touches the separate, undeclared £5m gift from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne now before the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, on top of the £12m Harborne gave Reform last year.
Reform built its pitch on being the party the rotten system couldn’t buy. The man who wrote the book on laundering money was standing next to the cash.
