Reform Donations Referred to Crime Agency as Police Probe Widens
The scrutiny of Reform UK’s finances has deepened, with donations linked to the party’s chairman, Richard Tice, referred to the National Crime Agency on suspicion of money laundering. One referral concerns a £1m donation to Britain Means Business, a Reform fundraising vehicle, whose ultimate source bankers and the agency have been unable to identify. It comes as the Metropolitan Police investigates £500,000 given to Reform by Fiona Cottrell, with two people interviewed under caution, and a separate inquiry into a £37,500 donation to Robert Jenrick’s Tory leadership campaign, which he calls “entirely false”.
Three financial threads now run through Reform at once — the Cottrell donations, the Tice-linked referrals, and the Jenrick campaign money — and together they cut directly against the party’s core claim to be cleaner than the establishment it attacks. The unifying question is the source of the money: suspicious activity reports flag a £1m donation whose origin cannot be traced, and a loan from the convicted fraudster George Cottrell to Tice, made just before a property purchase and a party donation and repaid only afterwards. A suspicious activity report is not evidence of wrongdoing — banks file them as a compliance duty on large political transactions — but the volume, and the involvement of the crime agency, which is seeking help from a foreign partner to identify the funds, raise the stakes. It lands as Reform prepares to fight a by-election on exactly the anti-corruption message now turned against it. Watch the crime agency’s next steps, whether the Electoral Commission acts, and how the funding questions move Reform’s polling.