The National Crime Agency made a voluntary referral of itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct on 24 July over the leak of Reform figures' bank data, after complaints from Richard Tice and Nigel Farage1. The IOPC, the watchdog for police and law-enforcement complaints in England and Wales, determined that the complaints were suitable for local investigation by the NCA's own Professional Standards Unit. That leaves the NCA examining its own conduct rather than the IOPC examining it.
The leaked material reached the Guardian and The Sunday Times and covered an £80,000 loan from George Cottrell to Tice's company Tisun Investments, plus a £1m donation from Cottrell's mother to a think tank Tice owns, both reported in July2. The payments themselves have not changed. Tice and Farage dispute how records of them reached two newsrooms.
Banks file suspicious activity reports under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, at a volume running to several hundred thousand a year, and the NCA's own guidance stresses that a report is not a finding against anyone. That is the substance of the Reform complaint: material carrying no allegation reached two newsrooms. The counter-argument, which Reform does not make, is that the agency was never the only holder. Banks, their compliance contractors and the UK Financial Intelligence Unit all touch the same file.
Because the finding will be reported by the NCA about the NCA, neither side will be able to lean on it very hard. Farage gains a grievance that survives whatever happens to the separate integrity threads around Reform's finances, including the standards inquiry paused in early July. If the Professional Standards Unit concludes the leak came from inside, every future report touching a political party becomes harder for the agency to act on.
