Met Police Probe £1 Million Reform UK Donations, Interviewing 2 Under Caution

Q: Who truly funded the £1m routed through an Australian platform to Richard Tice's company just before the 2024 UK election?

No one outside the investigation can yet say with certainty who ultimately funded the £1m. Publicly, the money was presented as coming from Fiona Cottrell, who sent £1m to Richard Tice’s company, Britain Means Business, in June 2024. But reporting by the Guardian, cited in the material here, says bankers and the National Crime Agency were unable to identify the ultimate source of all of those funds. What is known is that the £1m did not, according to that reporting, move straight from Cottrell to Britain Means Business. It was routed through a UK bank account linked to Oneify, an Australian-registered payments platform. The same reporting says Cottrell’s account had received repeated deposits of large sums before the transfer, and banks could not trace where those underlying funds originally came from. The NCA was said to have sought help from Australia’s Austrac to follow the money trail. That uncertainty is central to the police inquiry. The Metropolitan Police are investigating possible offences under section 61 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act, which covers concealed or disguised donations and false information about a donor’s identity or the amount given. Two people have been interviewed under caution, but no arrests have been made. So the truthful answer is that the declared donor was Fiona Cottrell, but the true beneficial source of the £1m routed through Oneify has not been publicly established and remains under investigation.

Q: What secret financial data sparked an internal NCA leak review regarding Nigel Farage and Reform UK's political funding?

The data at issue was confidential banking intelligence contained in Suspicious Activity Reports, centered on money flows linked to Nigel Farage and Richard Tice. Reports say the NCA opened an internal leak review after complaints that private financial information had reached the media. The material included scrutiny of Fiona Cottrell’s £1 million payment in June 2024 to Richard Tice’s company, Britain Means Business, and the subsequent £500,000 passed from that company to Reform UK. It also included other flagged transactions involving Reform figures, notably an £80,000 loan from George Cottrell to Tice’s company Tisun Investment, and reporting around a separate £5 million gift to Farage from crypto businessman Christopher Harborne. The most sensitive element appears to have been SAR-based banking concerns that investigators and banks could not identify the ultimate source of the £1 million routed through Britain Means Business, reportedly via a UK account connected to the Australian payments platform Oneify. That undisclosed origin of funds is what appears to have triggered the wider NCA review into alleged leaks.

2 articles · Updated · bbc.co.uk · Jul 25

Two £250,000 donations from Richard Tice-controlled Britain Means Business are now part of a Metropolitan Police investigation into £1 million given to Reform UK before the 2024 election.
The Met said it opened the case in February 2025 after an Electoral Commission referral and is examining alleged offences under Section 61, which bars disguised donations from impermissible donors.
Fiona Cottrell gave Britain Means Business £1 million in June 2024, and the company then donated £500,000 to Reform UK; Tice said giving half that money to the party was his decision.
Two people have been interviewed under caution and no arrests have been made; Reform said it follows strict donation-vetting rules, while Tice accused the Met of a politically motivated smear.
The four payments were disclosed in Electoral Commission records, which also show Reform's bank account was frozen shortly after the second company donation, though the reason remains unclear.