Reform Finance Inquiry Widens as More Transactions Reach Crime Agency
The scrutiny of Reform UK’s finances widened on Saturday, with further transactions worth millions reported to the National Crime Agency through banks’ suspicious-activity reports. The referrals are said to involve the party’s chairman, Richard Tice, and the businessman George Cottrell — including an £80,000 bridging loan to a Tice investment vehicle and the £1m donation to Britain Means Business, part of which reached Reform. The party denies any wrongdoing. It adds to Metropolitan Police inquiries into £500,000 in Cottrell-family donations and a £37,500 gift to Robert Jenrick’s leadership campaign.
The picture emerging is of a party whose money repeatedly trips the compliance alarms banks are obliged to raise on large or opaque political transactions. A suspicious-activity report is not evidence of a crime — it is a mandatory flag — but the accumulation of them, across multiple figures and vehicles, and the crime agency’s involvement, is corrosive for a party whose central claim is that it is cleaner than the establishment it attacks. The unifying thread is the source of funds: money whose ultimate origin bankers say they cannot trace, and loans from a convicted fraudster timed around donations and purchases. It lands as Reform prepares to fight a by-election on precisely that anti-corruption message. Watch the crime agency’s next steps, whether the Electoral Commission acts, and whether the drip of disclosures dents Reform’s commanding poll lead.