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The rise in public support for Reform UK – and Nigel Farage’s own prediction that he expects to be the UK’s next prime minister – has put the party and its leader in unfamiliar territory.

Their policies and candidates are coming under greater scrutiny, and now, so is their funding.

When it comes to money, Farage is facing questions that so far he has struggled to convincingly answer.

A Guardian investigation has put him and his party under more pressure, with financial industry sources revealing that transactions involving Reform’s leadership have been referred to the National Crime Agency.

At issue are a number of transfers that have been deemed to require further investigation.

For instance, the Guardian understands bankers and the NCA have been unable to identify the ultimate source of funds for a critical £1m donation to a Reform fundraising vehicle before the 2024 general election. The NCA is seeking help from a foreign partner to identify it.

It is just one of several transactions that raised concerns and were sent to the NCA via suspicious activity reports (SARs), according to sources.

SARs are a formal mechanism by which banks, solicitors and other regulated parties can send the NCA, as the agency explains, details about “knowledge or suspicion of money laundering”.

They are not crime reports or proof of a crime, but as the NCA says, they are “a vital source of intelligence …[and] provide information and intelligence from the private sector that would otherwise not be visible to law enforcement”.

At least four such reports have been made by bankers with concerns about transactions involving senior Reform leaders, the Guardian reported on Tuesday and Wednesday, ranging from the £5m gift Farage received from the cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne, to a £1m donation routed to a party fundraising vehicle, Britain Means Business, via a convicted fraudster’s mother.

These are the details of the concerns raised by sources, who have told the Guardian they believe the SARs pose important questions for a major political party – and who say they are concerned about the speed at which law enforcement is able to investigate such matters. The number of SARs reported to the NCA annually is so large that investigations can take years.

The £1m donation to Britain Means Business

In June 2024 Reform UK was facing a short-term cash crunch in the final weeks of its 2024 election campaign, according to party insiders. They say it particularly needed to push funds into key constituencies, including those being contested by Nigel Farage (Clacton-on-Sea) and the party’s deputy leader, Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness).

Fiona Cottrell, the mother of one of Farage’s closest associates, the convicted fraudster George Cottrell, appeared to step into the breach behind the scenes.

At the time, Fiona Cottrell was already one of Reform’s significant donors, having given a total of £500,000 in two separate payments in May 2024. But the following month, it appears she decided not to donate to the party in her own name.

Instead, she sent £1m from an account in her name to Britain Means Business, a company that was originally set up to fund the Brexit campaign under its former name, Leave Means Leave, and has become a fundraising vehicle for Reform UK.

Tice, a director and account holder for BMB, then immediately transferred £500,000 in two tranches to Reform UK on 10 and 12 June, the Guardian understands.

Tice did not respond to questions put to him.

BMB had given the party £154,000 before the Fiona Cottrell donation that, alongside Tice’s personal money, proved to be a lifeline during scant years for donations in 2021 and 2022, when Tice was the party’s leader.

Because Fiona Cottrell is understood to have given the money to BMB rather than directly to Reform UK, only the Britain Means Business name appears in the party’s declarations. That, in effect, kept her involvement out of the public realm.

This is not illegal, but it is unclear why she chose to do this when her other donations have been publicly recorded as an individual.

Despite extensive efforts to find out, the Guardian has been told it is still unclear where the whole £1m ultimately came from.

The Guardian understands Fiona Cottrell did not send the money straight to the Britain Means Business account. She routed it via a UK bank account of an Australian money exchange platform called Oneify.

According to sources, she moved the £1m to Oneify after deposits of hundreds of thousands of dollars were repeatedly made into her account. The sums came to her in several tranches, and the Guardian has been told banks were unable to trace the ultimate source of the funds.

The NCA has sought assistance in tracing the money from Austrac, their Australian counterpart, as the Oneify money exchange platform is registered there, the Guardian understands.

In situations where bankers cannot account for the source of big deposits, such as the £1m, they are obliged to raise SARs. They did this in June 2024, according to sources.

When including a further £250,000 that Fiona Cottrell gave to the party in February 2025, she may have given as much as £1.75m to Reform.

Most of this, £1.25m, was transferred directly to the party, £500,000 more than was publicly declared under her name via the Electoral Commission.

Fiona Cottrell’s funding of Reform is particularly interesting because of her son, George, whose relationship with Farage and Reform has been an enduring source of media commentary and intrigue. As the author of a book on money laundering, a renowned gambler and convicted fraudster, George Cottrell’s association with Farage has faced even more scrutiny as the party has gained support in the polls.

He is nominally referred to as a volunteer or senior adviser by party staffers, though insiders claim he has long been deemed an unofficial treasurer. He was the deputy treasurer for Ukip, and he has direct relationships with many of the party’s biggest donors. He is often seen at Farage’s side at official events despite being resident in Montenegro. He has extensive knowledge of cryptocurrencies and uses them for business transactions.

He is unlikely to ever formally take on an official treasurer role in Reform UK owing to his criminal history: he was convicted of wire fraud and served several months in a US prison in 2017.

His gambling activity, which allegedly includes acting as a frontperson for a gambling syndicate owned by the football club owner Tony Bloom, also makes it hard for him to take on an official role.

Bankers looking at his mother’s transactions were concerned there was at least a possibility that the ultimate source of funds may have been, or come via, George Cottrell, the Guardian has been told.

His mother is understood to be of relatively modest means and he is a convicted fraudster whose wrongdoing has made him a high-risk client for banking. His close relationship with Farage and involvement with Reform also make him a “politically exposed person”, someone whom the banks are obliged to scrutinise more carefully.

The loan, the property deal and the donation

The £1m donation to Britain Means Business is not the only transaction potentially involving George Cottrell to be examined by bankers, according to sources.

On 2 December 2024, Tice received what he described to bankers as a short-term loan from George Cottrell, sources told the Guardian.

They said a sum of £78,100 landed in the account for Tisun Investments Limited, a British company of which Tice is a director and which manages many of his financial interests. The combination of George Cottrell’s criminal past and the fact he was lending money to a serving MP meant the transaction was examined closely by bankers.

On the same day Tice received the money, he is then understood to have sent about £92,000 to fund a property purchase in Dubai for a development called Peninsula 5.

Bankers alerted the NCA, sources said. The timing of the transactions suggested the loan and the foreign property deal were connected but it was unclear why, sources said.

Later in December, sources say, Tice transferred another tranche of money from Tisun to an account in Dubai for the property purchase, taking the total sent to around £650,000.

On 7 January 2025, Tice gave £613,000 to Reform via Tisun Investments Limited. It is relatively unusual for an MP to donate to their own party.

A few weeks later, on 24 February, £655,000 was paid into Tisun’s account. It was described by Tice as an overpayment for the property purchase. Instead of paying cash for the property, he said he had got a mortgage, sources told the Guardian.

Shortly after the £655,000 came through, Tice sent £80,000 from Tisun to George Cottrell, seemingly repaying his loan.

These transactions, bankers believe, require full investigation by the NCA.

In Tisun Investments’ corporate filings, the £80,000 loan from George Cottrell does not appear to be disclosed, either to Companies House or the parliamentary authorities.

Banks and legal firms treat property transactions as high risk given the way real estate deals have historically been used to help people launder money. In fact, in his book How to Launder Money, published earlier this year, George Cottrell has described property as a particularly useful vehicle for those looking to obscure the sources of their funds

“Property is a highly effective tool for laundering large sums of money,” he writes. “Cash can be introduced into the system to later be recovered as refunds, kickbacks, hidden payouts or as part of a property sale.”

Bankers are trained to ask additional questions about property deals and to watch for any signs they might need to file an SAR. Lawyers are also meant to check sources of funds for a home purchase. If those sources raise suspicions, these can be grounds for law enforcement to investigate individuals or organisations.

In guidance on how to spot potential money laundering in property purchases, the Law Society of England and Wales says: “The property market’s high value, its capacity to absorb illicit funds in plain sight, and the involvement of multiple parties make it a prime vehicle for money laundering.”

Separately, there are several rules for MPs when it comes to loans. These include not accepting “any donations, loans, security or other support valued at over £500 from impermissible donors” and declaring “directors’ loans (if these are at favourable rates)”.

Tice is understood to have paid back £1,900 more than he appears to have borrowed from George Cottrell. However, factoring in commercial rates of interest, the difficulty in securing loans as large as £80,000 and the likely early repayment fees when paying back a loan so quickly, mean he would have been unlikely to get that sum on those terms via the open market, according to data on interest rates and loan terms reviewed by the Guardian.

This raises the question of whether or not Tice should have declared the loan so that it appeared on the register of members’ interests, and whether he should have accepted funds from George Cottrell, who is believed not to be a permissible donor, in part because he is resident in Montenegro and not an overseas voter.

George Cottrell’s approach to declared donations also suggests he may be an impermissible donor, although this was denied by his lawyers in a letter to the Guardian.

Instead of donating to the Reform party, he has funded foreign travel, such as flights for Farage, which foreigners who are not overseas voters are allowed to do.

The gift

Just weeks before he announced he would stand in the 2024 general election on 3 June, Farage received a gift of £5m from Harborne, the cryptocurrency billionaire and Reform donor.

Harborne was already a well-established political donor. In the run-up to the 2019 general election, he had given £10m to the Brexit party, which was later renamed Reform UK. He also gave £1m to the private office of Boris Johnson, the former Conservative prime minister, on 21 November 2022.

Farage and Schillings, the lawyers acting for Harborne, have said the gift was “unconditional”. Farage initially claimed the money “was given to me so that I would be safe and secure for the rest of my life”. He later said it was a reward for his campaigning for Brexit.

In one of the letters sent to the Guardian, Farage said he did not know about the SAR. He added: “I have no reason to doubt the ultimate source of the money.”

Schillings said the gift was given on 5 April 2024. They argued that, as this was seven weeks before Farage decided to stand for election, Harborne did not envisage Farage returning to politics.

Still, it seems some of the funds were not received by Farage until later, in mid and late May, according to sources.

Bankers made a SAR to the NCA on 16 May 2024, after they were told of the gift. This was because it was a vast sum given to an active politician by a businessperson with complex international affairs who operated in, in financial terms, high-risk jurisdictions.

Parliamentary rules state that any benefits should be declared for the 12 months before taking up office as an MP, depending on whether it was for political or personal purposes. The rules state: “If there is any doubt, the benefit should be registered.”

Kevin Hollinrake, the Conservative party chair, has said Farage was “obliged” to declare the gift.

Reports and gaps

That there are so many instances of reports to the NCA surrounding a small group of politicians and their supporters raises a host of questions about the reporting systems in the UK, and the role of law enforcement in protecting the UK’s electoral processes.

It is unclear if the NCA has realised that the reports raised by bankers might merit examination as a whole.

Philip Rycroft, a former senior civil servant, was asked to review foreign interference in the UK election system by the government. He published his findings in April this year.

One of his conclusions was that “know your donor” provisions in proposed legislation governing electoral donations, the representation of the people bill, “should be further developed to more closely mirror the customer due diligence provisions in the anti-money-laundering regulations”.

It suggests gaps left between the rules of the code of conduct and the Electoral Commission in ensuring transparency of political financing. By the measure of anti-money-laundering regulations for banking, Reform UK has already set off several alarms, but these appear not to have been caught by the UK’s elections watchdog, or parliament.

The commission rules state that a “party must take “all reasonable steps” to ensure it knows the true identity of the donor, and to check the donation comes from a permissible source.

It is unclear how Tice could be sure that funds come from a permissible source if bankers and the NCA are not.

Fiona Cottrell has not responded to attempts to contact her.

George Cottrell’s lawyers refused to respond to detailed questions.

In correspondence with the Guardian, Harborne’s lawyers have claimed Farage received the money from him on 5 April 2024. They did not provide a substantive response to detailed questions about the gift and an SAR to the NCA. Instead they asked for a copy of any documents in the Guardian’s possession.

An NCA spokesperson said: “The NCA does not confirm or deny the receipt of SARs, nor comment on how any SAR is used. SARs are confidential and breaching that confidentiality risks committing a tipping off offence under the Proceeds of Crime Act.”