Who is Ben Delo? Meet Reform’s new mega-donor

Farage banks another £4 million...

Nigel Farage has been put in a tricky situation by the Labour government.

In recent times, Reform had largely been funded by one donor – billionaire crypto investor Christopher Harborne, who shovelled £12 million into the party’s coffers last year.

Now, however, Labour has implemented a new rule: if you live abroad, you’re only allowed to donate £100,000 every year to a political party. That puts Harborne in a bit of an awkward position, given he has lived in Thailand for the past 20 years.

This week has seen new developments. Reform’s funding woes appear to have been eased by a new mega-donor, Ben Delo, who says he is moving back to the UK from Hong Kong to help fund Farage’s war machine. He claims to have already bunged Reform a cool £4 million, with more to follow.

So, as Farage acquires a new ATM, I asked my friend – investigative journalist Max Colbert – to give you the lowdown on what we currently know about Delo, and what his donations mean for the future of British democracy.

---

This isn’t a paywall.

Lots of writers would make you pay to read beyond this point, but I believe these facts should be seen by as many people as possible.

If you’d like to support this mission, please consider becoming a paid subscriber…

📝 Max Colbert

The £4 million given to Reform by Ben Delo, British entrepreneur and co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, already places him among the UK’s top political donors of all time.

There are only eight donations in modern British history that overtake or rival this new act of political philanthropy.

Delo, like Christopher Harborne, is based abroad, and both have significant interests in cryptocurrency businesses – a common feature of several recent Reform donors.

In this context, Reform was unsurprisingly the first UK party to accept donations in the form of cryptocurrencies. A recent Observer investigation found that the party had accepted crypto donations via a third-party who converted them to cash before they reached Reform’s coffers, effectively obscuring the original funding source.

Reform declined to identify this mystery third party, raising further concerns that anonymous funds could be making their way to the UK from abroad.

While recent changes to the law, brought in by the Labour government hot on the heels of the Rycroft review, had promised to hobble Reform’s chances of securing anonymous funds or large cash injections from people based abroad, Delo seems unfazed.

On recommendations from former senior civil servant Philip Rycroft, the government has now introduced a temporary ban on crypto donations, and has capped overseas contributions to £100,000 per year, which could present problems for a party majority funded by people with offshore interests.

Delo, 42, while surprisingly approving of the ban on crypto donations, has come out swinging against the idea that foreign donations should be capped. He has now stated his intention to return to the UK to continue financing Farage’s “war chest”, accusing Starmer of creating a “rigged game” and trying to “stack the deck”.

Speaking to The Telegraph, he said: “The government should not be allowed to get away with it. I will move back to Britain early so I can contribute more to Reform’s budget”.

Delo seemingly doesn’t see the irony of complaining about a “rigged game”, while donating to a party funded by the same wealthy interests that have bought and rigged our political system for decades.

Indeed, Reform has received nearly 70% of its funding from just three people (Jeremy Hosking, Richard Tice, and Harborne), all of whom are billionaires or millionaires. The party also features among its other prominent financiers Lord Bamford, chairman of the construction conglomerate JCB, and a company linked to Britain’s second-richest family, the Reuben brothers.

One could be forgiven for being confused as to why the Labour Party – which in Delo’s words is “sitting on its cushion of trade union funding” and represents the “elite” – is more of a democratic threat than, say, a party backed by tax haven billionaires.

But then again delusion appears to be one of Delo’s hallmarks, as he says Reform is “leading in the polls by virtue of recognising and articulating the full scale of the problems our country faces”.

A talented mathematician, Delo was educated at Oxford’s Worcester College after winning a placement, and was apparently almost expelled during his time there for internet piracy (using BitTorrent). His fellow students at the college at one point reportedly voted him the most-likely to become a millionaire… and second most-likely to go to jail.

Delo then went to work as a software engineer at IBM, before later moving to Hong Kong to work for the investment bank JP Morgan, building trading systems. There, he became interested in Bitcoin, eventually becoming one of three co-founders of BitMEX, a leading crypto trading platform.

Described in one Times article from 2018 as Britain’s “youngest self-made billionaire”, Delo’s road to success hasn’t been without event. In 2022, he and his BitMEX co-founders pled guilty to Bank Secrecy Act violations, for failing to establish and maintain an anti-money laundering programme at the company. He was fined $10 million and returned to Hong Kong to serve 30-months’ probation, before later being pardoned by Donald Trump. BitMEX was ultimately fined £100 million for ignoring US money laundering laws.

A firm believer in philanthropy, Delo has splashed his cash on a host of organisations and causes, including giving millions to support autistic young people. However, of particular note is Delo’s apparent role as an emerging power-broker on the right.

In his Telegraph article, he mentions being sympathetic to Kemi Badenoch, despite believing that the Tories “threw away the moral right to govern”, and describes Restore leader Rupert Lowe as “a breath of fresh air”, who “shifts the Overton window a little further every day and keeps Reform on its toes (a good thing)”.

Lowe has been dubbed by campaign group HOPE Not Hate as “by far Britain’s most extreme MP”, proudly advocating for the mass deportation of immigrants.

A recent investigation found that Delo has provided access to an institution in the heart of Westminster – a workspace known as ‘The Sanctuary’. Housed in a neo-Gothic building of the same name, it reportedly acts as a form of “startup accelerator” for political projects, including those with hardline positions on immigration, abortion, and nationalism.

Rupert Lowe used the space to announce the creation of Restore Britain, and the party’s media content is filmed inside the building. The “anti-woke” podcast Triggernometry uses the site free of charge.

The range of sometimes conflicting views allowed to flourish in The Sanctuary have reportedly been described as “The Ecosystem” – different groups with different aims, but which all seem to camp in this one tent, sharing what HOPE Not Hate describe as a “broad opposition to liberal orthodoxies”.

While lawyers for Delo say that his providing the space is not indicative of support for any particular view or group, and that The Sanctuary has platformed those on the left too, it is of note that Delo himself is a fierce opponent of political correctness, which he has described as “an existential threat to western civilisation”.

It’s also clear that Delo is willing to put his money where his mouth is, and could well end up becoming one of the most influential financiers of right-wing thought in the UK, despite having maintained a relatively low profile until recently.

Hitting out at the Rycroft review, Delo called the findings “so tinpot that it would be laughable if it wasn’t part of Labour’s effort to stack the political deck against the most popular opposition party”.

But, given Delo’s own outsized influence in British politics already becoming apparent, and his willingness to fund a slew of politically-adjacent groups, notably those on the right, it’s worth questioning who’s really trying to stack the deck, and the potential consequences should they be successful.

---

Max Colbert is an investigative journalist and researcher who has written for The Guardian, Mirror, DeSmog, Byline Times, and Good Law Project. You can find him on Bluesky @mc00.bsky.social