Malcolm Cupis is a public relations consultant, strategist and writer. He stood as a Reform UK candidate in 2024 and was a constituency chairman. He resigned from Reform UK in February 2025
The latest developments in Reform UK have generated a lot of heat and a fair bit of light in the cloistered world of political commentators. The news that Laila Cunningham has been confirmed as their London Mayoral candidate has been one of the worst kept secrets in Westminster for some time, but the fact that the party has opted for a Muslim woman ahead of SAS hero and arch patriot Ant Middleton has certainly been the subject of intense debate on social media.
I am regularly asked about the influence of Islam on Reform UK and specifically about donations to the party, especially in the light of what is commonly regarded as a recent volte face by Nigel Farage on attitudes towards immigration, Islamisation and the idea of repatriating illegal migrants.
This has taken on new significance following the uprising in Iran over the last few days, which Reform appears to have studiously maintained silence on until Farage personally turned up to a demonstration outside the Iranian embassy on Monday.
The matter of funding sources and influence with Reform obviously gained more attention last month when the former leader of the party in Wales, Nathan Gill, was jailed for 10 years after being found guilty of taking bribes from the Russian state to speak in favour of them in the European Parliament and on Ukrainian television.
Following the Nathan Gill court case my first thought was that I personally found it hard to believe that he had operated in complete isolation without the knowledge of others in the party.
So what is the truth about Reform UK’s donors, policy influence, Russia and Iran?
I’ll start this by saying that lack of access to funds was a major talking point and significant concern for many Reform Parliamentary Candidates ahead of the General Election last year.
I can only speak of my own experience, which was mirrored by many other candidates that I knew. We were prevented from setting up bank accounts and the party told us that due to blacklisting it was unable to establish accounts on our behalf. Membership fees from constituents, monies we raised in campaigning and donations were all banked centrally and we were told would be reallocated to us. In the event that didn’t happen. No funding was received and I, and many other candidates, were left to personally fund our own campaigns with no assistance.
Funding is a vital component of a successful political party and it was no surprise that this became a major objective for Reform after the general election.
Nigel Farage made clear shortly after the election that Reform was going to target the centre ground in its quest for power. That meant reshaping the party in terms of policy to appeal to centrist voters and attracting voters, members and donations from other parties.
Subsequently many of the biggest donations to Reform have come from individuals who formerly invested in the Conservative Party. This includes the likes of Thailand-based Christopher Harborne, who has been given substantial press coverage recently after donating a further £9 million to Reform in the last year, Jeremy Hosking and Nick Candy, who has become Reform’s Treasurer.
Another major donor is Fiona Cottrell, a former glamour model and girlfriend of King Charles. She is the mother of George Cottrell, a close friend and associate of Nigel Farage and former head of fundraising for UKIP. George is said to have spent eight months in prison in America in 2016 after being found guilty of providing money laundering services on the dark web.
The list also includes former Conservative donors Mohammed Amersi and Bassim Haidar, both of whom amassed fortunes in telecommunications. Amersi donated substantial sums previously to Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. He was apparently named in the infamous Pandora Papers for his involvement in a £162 million deal between Swedish company Telia and Uzbek businesswoman Gulnara Karimova, who subsequently was sentenced to 10 years in prison in her home country for fraud and money laundering.
Haidar was born in Nigeria to Lebanese parents and appears to be actively involved in the WEF with an active page dedicated to him on their website
Haidar is reported to have donated up to £1 million to Reform.
When he made this donation Haidar’s main family residence was apparently in the magnificent development at One Hyde Park – thought to be the most exclusive residential development in Europe. In interviews given following the donation Haidar stated that he intended to leave the UK following the policies adopted by the Labour government.
One Hyde Park was developed by a joint venture called Project Grande, which is an agreement between CPC Group and Waterknights. CPC Group was founded by the Candy brothers, Nick and Christian. Waterknights is fronted by Sheikh Jassim Al Thani, the former Prime Minister of Qatar and brother of the Emir.
Nick Candy, as mentioned, is also the Treasurer of Reform UK and himself recently was reported to have donated £1 million to the party. His wife is Holly Vallance, Australian pop star, who has also separately donated money to the party.
Nick Candy and his brother Christian had a legal battle over the ownership of CPC Group some years ago and the result of that is that it is now wholly owned by Christian, but Nick owns Candy & Candy, an interior design company that is contracted to undertake work in many of the most prestigious developments in London and further afield, including at One Hyde Park.
Qatar is well known to have very close ties to Iran and Iran has close ties to Russia and to China, which it is militarily and economically supported by. It is also home to Hamas, which has its headquarters in Doha, and to Al Jazeera, the increasingly global media network. An interesting aside, Al Jazeera was actually established by the BBC when they left Doha, using capital equipment paid for by you, the British taxpayer. As a leading member of the Qatari Royal family and former Prime Minister, Sheikh Jassim has significant influence over Qatar’s governance.
Qatar is also directly financing the spread of Islam to western countries, most especially in the UK, and directly funds the building of mosques.
Project Grande purchased the site for One Hyde Park from Land Securities in 2005 for £150m and the construction was then financed by a £1.15 billion development loan from the German bank, Eurohypo, a successor to Dresdner Bank, which was led by Matthias Warnig, a long-term associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The building was then designed by renowned architect Richard Rogers and Candy & Candy was involved in the interior design. Three commercial units were included in the development and these were leaded to Rolex, McLaren Automotive and the Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank.
When completed the properties were sold to a list of extremely wealthy oligarchs including Viktor Kharitonin, a Russian billionaire and business partner of Roman Abramovich, Rinat Akhmetov, a Ukrainian businessman who bought a triplex penthouse in 2010 for £136 million, Anar Aitzhanova, a Kazakh singer whose husband was apparently shot dead in 2004, Ekaterina Fedun, the daughter of Russian billionaire and Lukoil shareholder Leonid Fedun and Temur Akhmedov, the son of sanctioned Russian-Azeri oligarch Farkhad Akhmedov, whose $460 million superyacht was seized in Germany due to EU sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
On 18 June 2022, The Telegraph reported that Alexander Ponomarenko, a sanctioned Russian oligarch accused of purchasing a palace on behalf of President Vladimir Putin, is the owner of an apartment at One Hyde Park valued at £60 million.
All of this may be nothing more than circumstantial and may have no bearing on Reform’s position or policies, but it does give rise to legitimate questions over the way that Reform has flip-flopped, particularly over policies that relate to immigration and Islam in recent months, its attitudes towards Russia and now the fact that its Welsh leader has now been imprisoned after being found guilty of corruption over Russia.
It is evident that donors who funded the Conservative Party have shifted to Reform, at the same time that Reform is increasingly also attracting ever more councillor and MP defections. So could there be a correlation between the apparent change in policy direction that took place in the Conservative Party when it started attracting donations from foreign investors with specific interests and the fact that Reform seems to have changed core policies in recent months after attracting investment from some of the same people?
Under Nigel Farage Reform has constantly railed against the Conservative Party and he regularly reinforces his determination to destroy it. At what point, supporters might ask, does Reform destroy the Conservative Party by simply subsuming it? It has shifted its policies towards the centre, it is bringing in ever greater numbers of its people and attracting ever more money from those who have funded it.
Does he who pays the piper call the tune?
We should remind ourselves that Reform’s policies are all dictated down from the top – there is no democratic process. None of this suggests illegality but it certainly demonstrates the conflict of interest Reform faces as it attempts to continue to convince British people that it can be their salvation, whilst looking to attract international financial support and win votes and support from areas which are significantly removed from its origins and core.
Meanwhile very many current and potential Reform supporters, large numbers of whom shifted their support from the Conservative Party which they found was increasingly unconservative, are strongly opposed to the influence of the WEF and to globalists, and are greatly concerned about the influence of Russia and of Islam on western democracies.
The unfolding situation in Iran, the regime’s close links to Qatar and its Royal family and the significant amount of money that Qatar is investing in Britain and other Western nations to promote Islam is something that is increasingly recognised and generates a great deal of valid concern.
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