The Metropolitan Police expanded its criminal investigation into the financing of Reform UK on 9 September 2026, six days after Channel 4 News broadcast undercover footage of Nigel Farage's closest aides discussing funding from overseas.
Detectives said they had received a number of reports about donations and polling involving a political party, had assessed the material and found "there are potential offences requiring investigation".
The force said the new allegations will run alongside an existing Special Enquiry Team investigation into donations to the same party, and that it was seeking to obtain the relevant footage from Channel 4 News. Verbatim, the investigative group that ran the sting, said it "will cooperate with the police's investigation".
A Reform UK spokesperson said the party "denies any wrongdoing and will fully co-operate with the investigation" and would not comment further while the inquiry is live.
British electoral law bars political donations from anyone not on a UK electoral register and from companies not registered and carrying on business in the UK. Section 61 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 makes it an offence to knowingly do any act in furtherance of an arrangement facilitating a donation from an impermissible source, carrying up to a year in prison on indictment and six months on summary conviction.
Parties must report permissible donations above £11,180 and impermissible donations above £500, and must return impermissible money within 30 days or face an Electoral Commission penalty of up to £20,000.
The undercover footage
Channel 4 News and Verbatim broadcast the film on 3 September 2026 after close to a year of undercover work, in which a reporter posed as the UK-based son of a wealthy US businessman, a part played by an actor.
Channel 4 report
Dan Jukes, an aide to Farage for many years, was recorded telling the reporter that foreign money reached the party through British relatives, saying donors "donate through their kids". He listed other donors he said had used that route, their names bleeped in the broadcast.
James Orr, Reform's head of policy and a Cambridge theologian, was filmed in January 2026 saying of the arrangement that "we could easily get away with it", and describing the Electoral Commission as useless.
£500,000 was the sum discussed for a donation that would be registered against the son while the money came from his father, an impermissible donor. The donation was never made.
Farage met the fake donor at a lunch in July 2026, thanked him for the proposed donation and said on camera that it was all above board.
Farage has denied wrongdoing and said the party has "broken no law". He told the BBC on 6 September that he had not been listening at the lunch and that his remark was a question about whether the money was above board. He has described Jukes's comments as loose pub talk, said the donations named in them never happened, called both men contractors rather than staff and accused the journalists of entrapment.
Jukes and Orr stepped down on 4 September pending an internal Reform investigation. Both deny wrongdoing.
The polling contract
Three opinion polls costing £32,500 were paid for by IL Office LLC, a front company run by the undercover team, and carried out by JL Partners between January and July 2026. The first, on council elections, cost £18,000 and was published by the Telegraph. The other two ran in the Telegraph and the Times.
Reform denies commissioning the polls. Farage was recorded praising their value for money.
The British Polling Council said JL Partners breached its rule 2.1, which requires the client commissioning a published political poll to be disclosed, and said the programme indicated this may have been deliberate. The Market Research Society referred the matter to its standards board.
James Johnson, the JL Partners co-founder and a former chief pollster to Theresa May, admitted "a little bit of informal rule-bending" and said the client should have been disclosed. The firm said its polls met professional standards and that it had opened an internal review.
The Telegraph suspended the articles based on the polls, said it believed it had been misled and is reviewing its relationship with the firm.
Ofcom declined to investigate Channel 4 over the sting after complaints about the use of an actor.
Regulator and earlier investigations
The Electoral Commission said on 4 September it was "considering all relevant information, in line with our regulatory remit" and was in touch with the Met. The regulator said it does not approve any party's donor checks, and that arrangements designed to get around the donation rules are a matter for the police.
Bob Posner, a former chief executive of the Electoral Commission, told Channel 4 News the conduct in the footage involved "serious criminal offences".
Fiona Cottrell gave Reform two donations of £250,000 in May 2024, then £1m in June 2024 to Britain Means Business, a company controlled by deputy leader Richard Tice, which passed £500,000 to Reform the same month. The Met's Special Enquiry Team opened an investigation into those payments in February 2025 after an Electoral Commission referral.
Fiona Cottrell is the mother of George Cottrell, a Farage associate jailed in the U.S. in 2016 after pleading guilty to wire fraud. The Guardian reported in July 2026 that more than $2m moved from him to his mother shortly before her donations.
Two people have been interviewed under caution in that investigation and no arrests have been made. Tice has said the police inquiry may be "politically motivated".
Farage faces a parliamentary standards investigation over a £5m gift from Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based crypto billionaire, received in 2024 and not declared on the register. Farage said the money was personal and pays for his security.
Farage resigned his Clacton seat on 7 July 2026 over the scrutiny of his finances and won the by-election on 13 August with 22,239 votes, or 63.3 per cent, on a turnout of 44.4 per cent. Count Binface finished second with 26.9 per cent, the highest recorded by a novelty candidate in a UK parliamentary election.
The Met opened a third electoral funding investigation on 6 January 2026, after an Electoral Commission referral, into £40,000 of a £100,000 donation to Robert Jenrick's 2024 Conservative leadership campaign, money said to have originated with a US businessman. Jenrick has called the allegation "entirely false".
The Met's electoral fraud unit has not opened a criminal investigation into a political donation offence since 2010, according to the New Statesman, and no one has served a prison sentence for breaching UK political donation law.
