Nigel Farage’s corporate accounts appear to cast doubt on his claim that he funded the purchase of a £1.4 million house with earnings from a reality television appearance.
The leader of Reform UK has faced criticism after it was reported he bought the four-bedroom detached house in Surrey weeks after receiving a donation of £5 million from Christopher Harborne, a cryptocurrency billionaire based in Thailand.
Farage did not declare the gift upon becoming an MP and faces a parliamentary standards investigation. He has insisted that it was a “personal” donation to fund his security, which he claimed meant it was exempt from the transparency rules imposed on MPs and did not need to be declared.
A spokesman said last week that Farage had paid for the property with the money he was paid for appearing on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! on ITV. Farage was a contestant on the 2023 series of the show and was paid a fee of £1.5 million.
Last year, Farage said his fee had been paid to his personal media company, Thorn in the Side Ltd. Accounts show that the company’s cash balance rose from £300,000 on May 31, 2023 to £1.7 million exactly a year later. However, there is no record of a dividend being paid out during this period.
Property records show that the house was bought by Farage himself, not by Thorn in the Side, and there is no mortgage on the property.
Nimesh Shah, a tax expert at the accountancy firm Blick Rothenberg, said the records suggested that Farage did not pay for the house with the money he earned from his television appearance.
He told the Financial Times that the claim “needs to be clarified because the company’s accounts are not consistent with their statement”.
A spokesman for Reform UK said the house had not been paid for by Harborne because the purchasing process had started before the donation was made. They said: “Anti-money-laundering and proof of funds checks were in March, before he received the gift. Nigel has multiple sources of income, as you can see from his parliamentary register.”
