Yesterday, the Financial Times reported that the UK Labour government is set to announce a new regulation: Companies donating to UK political parties must now disclose the true identity of the individuals behind the donations.
This new rule stems from a series of scandals involving foreign funds infiltrating British politics. However, when it comes to foreign funds, one cannot overlook a 'stealth' crypto billionaire with dual citizenship funding the 'British Trump'.
According to the latest quarterly political donation data released by the UK Electoral Commission on March 5, 2026, the Reform UK party topped the list of UK political parties' quarterly fundraising with £5.5 million, but one donation of £3 million came from a single individual, with the source listed as Thailand.
The donor is named Christopher Harborne. Sometimes, he goes by Chakrit Sakunkrit.
He resides in Thailand, holds Thai citizenship, controls approximately 12% of the parent company of the world's largest stablecoin, Tether, under his Thai name, operates one of the world's largest private aviation fuel networks, and channels political funds to a right-wing party thousands of miles away in the UK. Over the past two years, he has used this wealth to bet on one thing: placing Farage and the Reform UK party in a position of power in British politics.
Cambridge Engineer & Bangkok Recluse
In December 1962, Christopher Charles Sherriff Harborne was born in England. He completed his secondary education at Westminster School, an institution whose alumni list includes British prime ministers, judges, and bankers, representing the very top tier of the imperial elite pipeline.
This was followed by Downing College, Cambridge, with dual degrees in engineering and management. Then, the European Institute of Business Administration (INSEAD) in Fontainebleau, France, where he obtained an MBA, graduating in 1988.
His first job was as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he worked for five years. McKinsey consultants of that era typically had career trajectories leading to executive seats in investment banks or multinational corporations. But Harborne did not. He went to Asia, started a research company, and in 2000 founded Sherriff Global Group, a commodities trading company initially focused on high-risk offshore services, named after his paternal family surname.
Around 2005, he moved his family to Thailand. That same year, he registered AML Global Ltd. there, an aviation fuel brokerage company. Today, AML Global has over 1,200 supply points worldwide and is one of the largest private aircraft fuel brokers.
In 2011, he officially obtained Thai citizenship, taking the name Chakrit Sakunkrit. A British citizen certificate and a Kingdom of Thailand nationality certificate have coexisted in the same person's pocket ever since.
No one knows his family situation. No spouse, no children, no verifiable records of private life. He never gives media interviews, almost never appears in public, and has no social media accounts. In an attention economy that runs on exposure, he uses complete invisibility as his shield.
Crypto Sphere布局 (Layout in the Crypto Sphere)
In 2011, when Bitcoin was still a secret jargon within geek circles, Harborne bought in. In 2014, he bought Ethereum, earlier than the vast majority of institutional investors.
But what truly changed his status in the crypto world was a hacking attack in August 2016.
That summer, the Bitfinex exchange was attacked, losing Bitcoin worth approximately $72 million—which, at today's prices, is close to $7 billion. Bitfinex could not immediately fully compensate users, so it adopted a controversial solution at the time: issuing a token called BFX to all affected users, representing a claim on the exchange, promising future redemption.
Most users chose to sell, panic-discounting, eager to exit.
Harborne chose to buy, and kept buying, eventually accumulating, under the name Chakrit Sakunkrit, approximately 12% of the shares in DigFinex, the parent company of Bitfinex and Tether.
This was no small bet. DigFinex's Tether is today the issuer of the world's largest stablecoin, USDT, with daily trading volumes consistently among the highest globally for crypto assets and a market cap exceeding $140 billion. Holding 12% of DigFinex shares means Harborne stands within the core circle of the global crypto-dollar system.
But this equity also brought him trouble. In March 2023, The Wall Street Journal published an investigative report on Tether and Bitfinex's banking arrangements. The article linked Harborne and his aviation fuel company AML Global to the path Tether/Bitfinex used to access the US banking system, suggesting he may have concealed his identity using his Thai name, Chakrit Sakunkrit, when opening an account at Signature Bank.
Harborne promptly filed a lawsuit, accusing The Wall Street Journal of publishing false allegations of "fraud, money laundering, and financing terrorism," and formally filed the case in the Superior Court of Delaware in February 2024.
The Wall Street Journal subsequently removed the paragraphs involving Harborne and AML Global from the report and stated in an editor's note: "This paragraph has been removed to avoid any possible implication... that Mr. Harborne or AML concealed or falsified information in the account application process."
The lawsuit was allowed to proceed.
The Biggest Variable in UK Politics
Beyond aviation fuel and crypto equity, Harborne has a third identity: one of the biggest individual donors in UK political history.
His political path is a traceable trajectory of right-wing bets. He previously donated to the Conservative Party and gave £1 million to support Boris Johnson's campaign. But in 2019, when Brexit negotiations repeatedly stalled in the Conservative-dominated parliament, he felt the Conservatives lacked the determination to push Brexit through and instead poured £6 million into Farage's Brexit Party, becoming its largest donor that year. The Brexit Party subsequently won big in the European Parliament elections.
In September 2023, he accompanied Johnson to Ukraine as a "Boris Johnson office adviser" to attend the Yalta European Strategy Forum, reportedly meeting with senior Ukrainian officials and President Zelensky. This role was never been publicly explained.
In 2024, the Conservative Party suffered a crushing defeat in the general election, and the Labour Party came to power. Both major traditional parties had lost their usefulness: Labour holds a clearly skeptical stance on cryptocurrency, with MP Rushanara Ali publicly calling for a ban on parties accepting crypto donations, calling them a "potential channel for foreign interference in democracy"; the Conservatives have been slow to act on crypto regulation, remaining at the level of statements.
Farage's Reform UK was the only option. Farage is also often called the British Trump.
Third quarter of 2025, £9 million. The largest single donation from a living donor to a single party in UK political history, setting a record in one go. Fourth quarter, another £3 million. For the full year 2025, his donations to Reform UK exceeded £12 million.
An Investment with Expected Returns
Harborne rarely speaks publicly about his donation motives. A rare exception was when he briefly stated: "The UK has not made the most of Brexit; we have not kept pace in 21st-century technology."
But it's hard for outsiders to ignore another, clearer logic: he holds approximately 12% of the parent company of the world's largest stablecoin, Tether. The UK becoming a crypto-friendly regulatory environment has direct commercial value for his core assets. Political donations, in a sense, are also an investment—just the asset is policy, not tokens.
The timeline makes this judgment harder to ignore. Reform UK's public embrace of cryptocurrency occurred *after* receiving Harborne's large donations. Farage announced that if Reform UK came to power, it would introduce a "Crypto Assets and Digital Finance Act," promising to reduce crypto capital gains tax, allow tax payments in cryptocurrency, and establish a national Bitcoin reserve.
In June 2025, Reform UK became the first major UK political party to officially accept cryptocurrency political donations. Farage himself later personally invested £215,000 to acquire approximately 6.3% of the shares in the UK Bitcoin treasury company, Stack BTC.
Reform UK denies any direct connection between the two. The Liberal Democrats and Labour have called for an investigation.
The Hidden Logic
In the US, the story of the crypto industry spending big to support Trump and regain regulatory control has already been told. In the UK, the same script is being reenacted—only the actors have changed, the money is still flowing.
The impact of this bet is already partially visible. Reform UK raised £18.6 million in 2025, surpassing the Conservatives' £13.4 million and Labour's £8.2 million, becoming the top fundraising party in the UK. Farage's approval ratings continue to climb, with Reform UK topping several polls.
If this trajectory continues, a party explicitly friendly to cryptocurrency could potentially lead the UK government, and the biggest beneficiaries would be those who placed their bets early.
The US story provides a reference: In 2024, the crypto industry poured over $200 million into congressional candidates. After Trump's victory, the SEC changed leadership, crypto regulatory direction shifted abruptly, and the industry welcomed a long-awaited policy红利 (policy dividend).
The UK story is not yet finished.
