Richard Tice

When the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards opened a formal investigation on 13 May 2026 into whether Nigel Farage failed to declare a £5 million personal gift from donor Christopher Harborne, Richard Tice publicly defended the arrangement as an 'unconditional personal gift' requiring no declaration.

His defence has become central to Reform UK's public position on the inquiry, which runs alongside separate Electoral Commission and FCA scrutiny of the same donor's roughly £37 million combined footprint across the party, its Brexit Party predecessor and Farage personally.

Banks separately flagged a £1 million transaction from Reform donor Fiona Cottrell to a company Tice runs, reporting it to the National Crime Agency over anti-money-laundering rules on 10 July 2026. A bank referral is a routine compliance report triggered when a transaction crosses an internal risk threshold, not a finding of wrongdoing, and no charge or allegation has been made against either Tice or Cottrell.

The NCA subsequently referred itself to the police watchdog on 24 July over a leak of the same Reform donor banking data; the watchdog returned the matter for local investigation by the agency's own Professional Standards Unit rather than opening an outside inquiry.