In September, British political party Reform UK announced that it had received two £36m donations from cryptocurrency billionaires Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo. The huge size of the donations - which smashed party donations records - have prompted renewed debate about the integrity of UK elections and the influence of extreme wealth on democracy.

Gavin Millar KC, a barrister at Matrix Chambers in London and expert on electoral law, says that multi-million-pound donations are problematic for democracy because of the risk that large amounts of money give the donors undue influence over a political party. ‘The argument in the case of these people [Harborne and Delo] is that their huge donations will influence a pro crypto policy if Reform gets into government,’ he says.

Concern raised over the size of the donations to Reform and the potential for that money to buy undue influence has led to renewed calls from lawmakers and civil society groups for a general donations cap. There are currently no limits on the amount of money UK-based donors can give to political parties. The government has proposed introducing a £100,000 annual cap on donations from British citizens who live overseas as part of the Representation of the People Bill. The cap would apply retrospectively to donations made from March.

Kamila Kingstone, Senior Campaign Lead for Spotlight on Corruption’s Defending Democracy Programme, says the absence of a cap on donations creates an arms race between political parties, which puts too much power in the hands of a small number of individuals. ‘These individuals can then become shadowy figures behind elected officials, and we’ve seen from oligarchies elsewhere, including in Eastern Europe, the democratic backsliding that can cause,’ she says.

Nicola Bonucci, the former director of legal affairs at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and a Member of the IBA Anti-Corruption Committee Advisory Board, says that state regulation of political finance is important to ensure transparency about who is funding political parties and a level playing field between parties at elections. ‘A cap on party donations is important because they’re a way of lobbying without actually having to lobby,’ he says.

Following their record-breaking donations, Delo and Harborne have faced scrutiny over their personal backgrounds and interest in UK democracy. Delo, the founder of defunct crypto exchange BitMEX, pleaded guilty in 2022 to charges in the US related to alleged failures to comply with anti-money laundering procedures. The Trump administration later pardoned him in 2025. Before his £36m gift to Reform, he had made multiple smaller donations to the party.

Harborne is a businessman and investor based in Thailand who has made his money in the aviation, defence and cryptocurrency industries. He has donated millions to Reform over the years, with his previous contribution made last year totalling £9m – the largest political donation by a living person at that time.

Reform has insisted that Delo and Harborne’s donations are legal under UK elections law and denied that the men will receive anything in return for their funding. A spokesperson for Delo told Global Insight that Delo’s donations are fully compliant with the law and before making them, he took ‘specialist legal advice to ensure they were properly made and permissible’. Delo has previously said that he made the gift to Reform because he wanted a ‘fair fight and a level playing field’.

London-based law firm Schillings said its client, Harborne, did not intend to comment other than to confirm that ‘all political donations made by him have been lawful and fully compliant with current electoral laws.’ Harborne has previously said he expects nothing in return for his donation and that the money is intended to prepare Reform for government.

In addition to restrictions on donations by overseas electors, the Representation of the People Bill includes a moratorium on cryptocurrency donations, stricter ‘know your donor’ requirements for political parties and company donation limits based on post-tax profits rather than revenue.

In a report published in March, Spotlight on Corruption found that, since 2019, there has been an 89% decline in the number of investigations concluded by the Electoral Commission while the value of fines imposed by the regulator had decreased by 92% during the same period. The maximum fine the Electoral Commission can impose is £20,000 per offence and, under the new rules proposed in the Representation of the People Bill, is set to rise to £500,000 per offence.

Millar KC says that the Electoral Commission should be better funded and be given stronger investigation powers to compel documents and information from suspects. He adds that due diligence checks on donations should be carried out by the regulator rather than political parties themselves. ‘The system under the 2000s legislation requires good faith and adherence to the spirit of the legislation and I don’t think that’s been present in our political parties,’ he says.

Kingstone says that the sentencing lengths for electoral finance offences also need to be increased to encourage enforcement authorities to open investigations and create a stronger deterrent effect for breaking the rules. The maximum sentence for an electoral finance offence is just one year in prison. ‘An electoral finance offence is as serious as electoral fraud because it amounts to the same thing – the integrity of an election is undermined’.

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