Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has repeatedly leapt to the defence of cryptocurrency, the industry that helped bankroll much of his benefactor Christopher Harborne’s fortune, even pressing the Governor of the Bank of England to abandon a policy that threatened the donor’s interests. Yet it is Harborne’s other business pursuits, rooted deep in the global arms trade, that could prove far more politically consequential as Farage positions his party on defence.
An ongoing investigation into the Thai-based billionaire’s wealth and its influence on Reform’s agenda has mapped a sprawling network of military-linked commercial interests, many of them built alongside former army officers, air force pilots, intelligence officials and defence contractors. There appears to be no precedent for a major British political donor so thoroughly entwined with the military-industrial complex.
Farage’s reliance on Harborne’s money raises serious questions about potential conflicts of interest. Harborne has provided roughly two-thirds of Reform’s funding, on top of an undeclared £5m gift to Farage personally that is now the subject of a probe by the MPs’ watchdog.
Sam Power, a political funding expert at the University of Bristol, said: “It doesn’t necessarily follow that Reform will have policies that will benefit Harborne’s interests in the military-industrial complex. But it warrants a spotlight. It will be interesting if Reform’s policies start aligning with Christopher Harborne in this area as they have in cryptocurrency.”
Harborne’s lawyers at Schillings dismissed any suggestion of impropriety: “The policies or positions Mr Farage may choose to adopt are a matter for Mr Farage and the Reform party. Our client’s commercial interests are unconnected in any way whatsoever with his political affiliations.”
From Cambridge to the cockpit
After private school, a Cambridge degree and stints at McKinsey and PepsiCo, Harborne decamped to Thailand in the 1990s, made his fortune in financial markets and struck out on his own. His entry into the defence world came in 2006, when he loaned £1.6m to Subsea Resources, a firm whose deep-sea operations salvaged metal and artefacts from shipwrecks and retrieved lost aircraft on behalf of governments. His loans, the company’s filings note, were “made on an informal basis without legal documentation”, before being converted into shares that earned him a board seat that December.
Subsea Resources had only five directors. Another, David Charters, who joined on the same day as Harborne, was listed as a Foreign Office veteran, a styling often used for officers of MI6. A description of Charters at a later security conference identified him outright as “a former MI6 intelligence officer”.
When Harborne stepped down from the board months later, his replacement was Tim McClement, a recently retired Royal Navy vice-admiral whose exploits included sinking the Belgrano during the Falklands war as a submariner.
By that point Harborne was already laying the foundations of AML Global, now a major military contractor. Thai corporate documents show connections to the armed forces from the outset. A fellow British director, Arthur Napolitano, had progressed from officer training at Sandhurst to the Queen’s Dragoon Guards and later served in the Sultan of Oman’s land forces.
Aviation remained Harborne’s passion, his lawyers say. A licensed pilot who once crash-landed a light aircraft in residential Hampshire, he built AML Global into a jet fuel broker arranging deliveries to private clients across the globe.
AML Global was sourcing fuel across North America, Europe, Asia and Russia by 2006, according to industry press at the time. It has since grown into “a worldwide leader in its industry with a comprehensive fuel supply network that maintains over 1,200 locations worldwide”, his lawyers state, though they add the company no longer arranges jet fuel produced in Russia.
Fueling the Pentagon
Civilian clients came first. Then AML Global began supplying the largest single consumer of fossil fuels on the planet: the United States military.
Scott Elder, AML Global’s vice-president, lists on LinkedIn that he served as a colonel in the US Air Force. An earlier profile noted work at the US embassy in Bangkok from 1996, the year Harborne arrived in Thailand, to 2011, when Harborne took Thai citizenship, in a role described as a “host nation liaison” for the Pentagon. He joined AML Global shortly after his government tenure ended.
By 2013, AML Global was winning Pentagon contracts for jet fuel, beginning modestly with a $4,000 shipment to the Philippines. The relationship escalated dramatically during the latter stages of Donald Trump’s first term, with contracts reaching tens of millions of dollars annually and totalling more than $140m since, according to published US government data.
AML Global rarely issues statements, but publicity material from its Northern Irish partner, Jet Assist, boasts that no other company supplies the US military with jet fuel in more locations beyond its borders, 62 by the end of 2025. The material trumpeted AML Global’s recruitment of US military personnel and anticipated a role in “future US, UK and allied military deployments into Europe”.
The $140m figure is small change against Pentagon fuel budgets measured in billions, but Harborne’s company is trusted to operate in strategically sensitive theatres, from Europe’s frontier with Russia, to the Middle East, a South Pacific outpost and Asian allies confronting China.
“The government vets these companies,” said Jerry McGinn, a military procurement expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “They take this very seriously.”
Separately, documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists show that bankers filed a suspicious activity report with US authorities in 2014 flagging large payments Harborne made in connection with crypto dealings under his Thai name, Chakrit Sakunkrit. The bankers said they had been “unable to identify the economic, business or lawful purpose” for the transactions. Such reports document concern rather than wrongdoing. Harborne denies any impropriety, and the Pentagon evidently continues to regard him as a trusted supplier.
Britain’s defence establishment
In the UK’s military-industrial base, Harborne occupies a still more sensitive position, one he has expanded dramatically since emerging as a major political donor.
In 2022, while consolidating his influence by funding both Boris Johnson’s Conservatives and Reform, he began building a stake in QinetiQ. Once the Ministry of Defence’s research arm, QinetiQ was privatised under Tony Blair and retains a central role in British war-fighting capability under MoD contracts. It operates Hebridean missile-launch sites, develops stealth capabilities for nuclear submarines, maintains the RAF’s Typhoon fleet, and builds the drones and robots redefining modern warfare.
Harborne is now QinetiQ’s biggest shareholder, with a 15% stake worth roughly £400m. His military technology investments have multiplied. In March, he bought into a company founded by a former Royal Marines reservist to develop “Iron Man” suits for combatants. That acquisition came after he took shares in a rival to Starlink, the satellite service that has handed Elon Musk influence over the course of conflicts including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Harborne’s military connections extend east as well. Thailand, which granted him citizenship in 2011, remains dominated politically by its armed forces. Paul Chambers, a leading authority on the Thai military who left the country last year under pressure from the army, said Harborne maintains a business relationship with the Royal Thai Armed Forces through AML Global and Sherriff Global Group, which appears to manage his fleet of private jets.
“The Royal Thai Air Force interacts with these firms for global logistical support, international flight operations, and overall air transport administration,” said Chambers, now a lecturer at the University of Oklahoma. Neither Harborne’s lawyers nor the Thai air force responded to questions.
Donations and Reform’s defence platform
Harborne has increasingly intervened directly in the military questions of the day. Last year, it emerged that he accompanied Johnson on a September 2023 visit to Ukraine after giving the former Conservative prime minister £1m. Jamie Shawyer, a Gulfstream pilot who has worked on Harborne’s aviation ventures for two decades, appears to have flown the pair to Poland, from where they travelled overland to Kyiv.
Harborne later told the Daily Telegraph that Johnson arranged for him to meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and that he told Ukraine’s president: “I’m absolutely passionate that Europe has to defend itself.”
By June 2024, when Reform launched its general election manifesto, Harborne had redirected his generosity to Farage, handing him a £5m gift. Both men insist the donation was “unconditional”, and Farage concluded he was not required to declare it after winning a seat.
The manifesto pledged increased defence spending alongside “incentives and tax breaks to boost the UK defence industry”. It promised to “improve equipment self-sufficiency and manufacture world-class products for export”, and to establish a “Joint Acquisition Corp” tasked with delivering “world-class procurement”. Each of those commitments would appear to favour QinetiQ and other Harborne-linked military interests.
Farage maintains that Harborne seeks nothing in return for his donations. Yet the Reform leader has publicly celebrated his benefactor’s military interests in much the same way he has championed Tether, the crypto firm Harborne partly owns.
“Christopher Harborne is an immensely successful man,” Farage told the Triggernometry podcast in July. “They all say crypto, but actually that is but a part of what this guy does. I think there are some things that are known in public, such as his big stake that he holds in QinetiQ, the defence technology company. I think he probably owns the biggest jet refuelling operation in the world, plus his crypto investments.”
Farage has struck notably hawkish positions. When Trump bombed Iran, he urged Sir Keir Starmer to commit British forces to the campaign. After the US president expressed displeasure at British plans to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, home to a crucial US-UK military base, to Mauritius, Farage boarded one of Harborne’s private jets and flew to the region in protest. Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, has said the party would scrap the deal entirely if it gains power.
A Reform spokesperson said Harborne had not discussed defence spending, defence policy or foreign policy with Farage or party officials, and denied that the donor’s military interests created any conflict of interest on defence policy. Harborne’s lawyers added that he “has not sought to influence any politician to support any of his commercial business interests”.
Why it Matters
The entanglement between Reform UK’s funding base and a global arms business with operational reach from the South China Sea to the Russian border is without modern parallel in British politics. With defence spending now one of the defining fiscal questions of the decade, the policies a Harborne-funded Reform government might pursue on procurement, alliance commitments and military investment carry implications far beyond Westminster. Voters deserve clarity on whether the largest donor in British politics is shaping, or merely sharing, his party’s positions on matters of war and peace.
