Original Title: "Tether Major Shareholder Spends £12 Million to Support the 'UK Version of Trump' in the Crypto Field"
Original Author: angelilu, Foresight News
Yesterday, the Financial Times reported that the UK Labour government is about to announce a new regulation: Businesses donating to UK political parties must disclose the true personal identities behind the donations.
This new regulation arises from a series of scandals involving foreign funds infiltrating UK politics. However, when mentioning foreign funds, one must pay attention to a "hidden" crypto tycoon who funds the "UK version of Trump" through dual nationality.
According to the latest quarterly political donation data released by the UK Electoral Commission on March 5, 2026, Reform UK topped the quarterly fundraising list again with £5.5 million, but one donation of £3 million came from the same person, registered as being from Thailand.
The donor is named Christopher Harborne. Sometimes, he goes by Chakrit Sakunkrit.
He resides in Thailand, holds Thai nationality, and possesses about 12% of the shares in Tether, the parent company of the world's largest stablecoin, using his Thai name to manage one of the world's largest private aviation fuel networks while funneling political funds to right-wing parties in the UK thousands of miles away, over the past two years, he has wagered this wealth on one thing: putting Farage and Reform UK in a position of power in UK politics.
Image Source: Lesley Martin / AFP via Getty Images
Cambridge Engineer & Bangkok Recluse
Christopher Charles Sherriff Harborne was born in England in December 1962. He completed his secondary education at Westminster School, which has a list of alumni including prime ministers, judges, and bankers, representing the upper echelon of the imperial elite.
He then attended Downing College, Cambridge, where he earned dual degrees in engineering and management. Next, he obtained an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, graduating in 1988.
His first job was as a management consultant at McKinsey, where he worked for five years. At that time, McKinsey consultants typically moved into executive positions in investment banks or multinational corporations. But Harborne did not. He went to Asia, worked at a research firm, and then founded Sherriff Global Group in 2000, a commodity trading company initially focused on high-risk offshore services, named after his paternal family surname.
Around 2005, he moved his family to Thailand. In the same year, he registered AML Global Ltd., an aviation fuel brokerage company. Today, AML Global has over 1,200 supply points globally and is one of the world's largest private jet fuel brokers.
In 2011, he officially became a Thai citizen and took the name Chakrit Sakunkrit. His UK citizenship certificate and Thai national identity card now coexist in the same person's pocket.
No one knows his family situation. No spouse, no children, no verifiable personal life records. He never gives media interviews, rarely appears in public, and has no social media accounts. In an attention-driven economy that relies on exposure, he uses complete invisibility as his shield.
Crypto Sector Layout
In 2011, when Bitcoin was still a secret code in geek circles, Harborne bought in. In 2014, he bought Ethereum, earlier than most institutional investors.
But what really changed his status in the crypto world was a hacker attack in August 2016.
That summer, the trading platform Bitfinex was hacked, losing approximately $72 million worth of Bitcoin — in today’s prices, this figure is nearly $7 billion. Bitfinex could not immediately fully compensate users, that led to a controversial solution at the time: issuing a token called BFX to all affected users, representing a debt to the trading platform, with a promise of future redemption.
Most users chose to sell off, panic-selling at a discount, eager to exit.
Harborne chose to buy in and continued to accumulate, ultimately amassing about 12% equity in Bitfinex and Tether's parent company DigFinex under the name Chakrit Sakunkrit.
This is not a small wager. Tether, under DigFinex, is now the issuer of the world's largest stablecoin USDT, with daily trading volumes consistently ranking among the top in global crypto assets, and a market capitalization exceeding $140 billion. Holding 12% of DigFinex means Harborne stands at the core circle of the global crypto dollar system.
However, this equity also brought him trouble. In March 2023, The Wall Street Journal published an investigative report on Tether and Bitfinex's banking arrangements, linking Harborne and his fuel company AML Global to Tether/Bitfinex's access to the U.S. banking system, suggesting he intentionally concealed his identity when opening an account at Signature Bank under his Thai name Chakrit Sakunkrit.
Harborne promptly filed a lawsuit, accusing The Wall Street Journal of publishing false allegations of "fraud, money laundering, and funding terrorism," officially filing in Delaware's Superior Court in February 2024.
The Wall Street Journal later deleted the paragraphs involving Harborne and AML Global and stated in an editor's note: "The removal of this paragraph is to avoid any possible implication... that Harborne or AML engaged in any concealment or falsification of information during the account application process."
The lawsuit was allowed to proceed.
The Biggest Variable in UK Politics
Beyond aviation fuel and crypto equity, Harborne has a third identity: one of the largest individual political donors in UK political history.
His political path is a trackable trajectory of right-wing betting. Early on, he donated to the Conservative Party and contributed £1 million to support Boris Johnson's campaign. However, in 2019, when Brexit negotiations repeatedly bogged down in Parliament led by the Conservative Party, he believed the Conservatives were not determined enough to push Brexit, so he instead threw £6 million behind Farage's Brexit Party, becoming the party's biggest donor that year. The Brexit Party subsequently won a landslide victory in the European Parliament elections.
In September 2023, he accompanied Johnson to Ukraine as a "consultant to Boris Johnson's office" to attend the Yalta European Strategy Forum, where he reportedly met with senior Ukrainian officials and President Zelensky. This identity has never been publicly explained.
In 2024, the Conservative Party suffered a disastrous defeat in the elections, and the Labour Party came to power. Both traditional parties had lost their utility: the Labour Party holds a clear skeptical stance on cryptocurrency, with Labour MP Rushanara Ali publicly calling for a ban on parties accepting cryptocurrency donations, describing them as "a potential channel for foreign interference in democracy"; the Conservative Party has long been sluggish in crypto regulation, remaining at the level of mere statements.
Farage's Reform Party is the only option. Farage is also often referred to as the UK version of Trump.
In the third quarter of 2025, £9 million. This is the largest single donation by a living contributor in UK political history to a single party, setting a record in one go. In the fourth quarter, there was another £3 million. For the whole of 2025, his total donations to the Reform Party exceeded £12 million.
An Investment with Expected Returns
Harborne rarely discusses his motivation for donations publicly, with the rare exception that he once briefly stated: "The UK has not fully utilized Brexit; we have not kept up in the 21st-century technology sector."
But it's hard for outsiders to ignore another clearer line of logic: he holds about 12% equity in Tether's parent company, the largest stablecoin globally. If the UK becomes a crypto-friendly regulatory environment, it would have direct commercial value for his core assets. Political donations, in a sense, are also an investment — it’s just that the target is policy rather than tokens.
The timeline makes this judgment harder to overlook. The Reform Party's public embrace of cryptocurrency happened only after receiving Harborne's substantial donations. Farage announced that if the Reform Party were in power, they would introduce the "Crypto Assets and Digital Finance Act," promising to reduce capital gains tax on crypto, allow tax payments with cryptocurrency, and establish a national Bitcoin reserve.
In June 2025, the Reform Party became the first major party in the UK to officially accept political donations in cryptocurrency. Farage himself subsequently invested £215,000 to acquire about 6.3% of the UK Bitcoin Treasury Company Stack BTC.
Reform Party officials denied a direct relationship between the two. The Liberal Democrats and Labour Party called for an investigation.
Hidden Logic
In the U.S., the story of the crypto industry pouring money to support Trump and regain regulatory dominance has already been told. In the UK, the same script is being repeated — except the lead actors have changed and the money is still flowing.
The impacts of this wager are already becoming visible. The Reform Party raised £18.6 million for the whole of 2025, surpassing the Conservative Party's £13.4 million and the Labour Party's £8.2 million, becoming the most funded party in the UK. Farage's approval ratings continue to rise, with the Reform Party placing first in several polls.
If this trajectory continues, a party that is clearly friendly towards cryptocurrency could seize control of the UK government, and those who bet early will benefit the most.
The American story has already provided a reference: In 2024, the crypto industry poured over $200 million into Congressional candidates, after Trump’s victory, the SEC saw a change in leadership, regulatory direction turned sharply, and the industry welcomed a long-awaited policy dividend.
The British story is yet to be written.
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