Labour urges Farage to stop evading scrutiny over £5m gift from crypto billionaire

The Labour party has written to Nigel Farage urging him to stop “evading reasonable scrutiny” over the £5m personal gift he received from the Thailand-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.The letter coincides with approval of a planning application that reveals the Reform leader’s plans to transform a dilapidated Kent property into a luxury beachfront residence.Farage is under investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner after the Guardian revealed that he received the £5m gift in the weeks before he U-turned on his decision not to stand as an MP in the 2024 general election.He was subsequently elected to parliament as the MP for Clacton in Essex and kept a high media profile with weekly press conferences. These regular events have stopped since the Guardian broke the news in April.Anna Turley, the Labour party chair, accused Farage of “running from scrutiny”. She said: “It’s time he ended his deafening silence and came clean with the public as to what’s gone on here. He can’t keep dodging questions and changing his story.”Farage first said the gift was to pay for personal security for the rest of his life, before changing tack after questioning and saying he considered it a reward from Harborne for having campaigned for Brexit.He has insisted there was no need to declare the £5m to the authorities because he was not an MP at the time he received it.Anna Turley, the Labour party chair, accused Farage of ‘dodging questions and changing his story’. Photograph: Jaimi Joy/ReutersIn the letter sent to Farage, Turley said his “shifting accounts have raised further serious questions about whether you have broken parliamentary rules, about potential conflicts of interest and about whether you have told the truth”.She added that the matter was of significant public interest, writing: “The British people, and the relevant authorities and regulators deserve one clear and truthful account of what happened. You have refused to answer questions from journalists asking about the extraordinary sum of money you received. That is not acceptable.”On Sunday, details emerged of Farage’s plans to overhaul one of his properties – a beachfront house in Kent. Farage’s company, Thorn in the Side Ltd, purchased the home in the village of Greatstone on the south Kent coast in March 2023 for £575,000. An application was then submitted to redevelop the property, including the building of a large extension, the Daily Mirror reported.A design statement said the proposed works would “transform the property into a high-quality, contemporary family home”, with four bedrooms, a sea-view balcony with glazed privacy screens, a log burner, a lift and six bathrooms.A housing expert told the Mirror that the proposed work could cost up to £700,000 and could make the property worth as much as £1.5m.In May, the Reform leader acquired another property weeks after receiving Harborne’s gift. Farage, rather than Thorn in the Side, paid £1.4m for the Surrey home, which is not mortgaged.Reform told the BBC that Farage’s £1.5m fee for participating in the ITV show I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! in late 2023 paid for the property, and that the purchase had commenced before he received the gift.However, the Financial Times reported that accounts for Thorn in the Side, which handles Farage’s media activities, suggested this money was not withdrawn at the time of the house purchase.Farage was paid £1.5m for appearing on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! in 2023. Photograph: James Gourley/ITV/ShutterstockA spokesperson for Farage said that work on the first planning application for the house in Kent began in November 2023, “a long time before the unconditional gift was made”.They added: “The second application related to more modest plans than those originally proposed. No building work has even commenced on the property in question.”Regarding the Surrey house, a Reform spokesperson previously said it was not bought with Harborne’s gift, and suggested that this was proved by the fact that anti-money laundering checks relating to the purchase were carried out before the gift was made.The spokesperson said: “Nigel has multiple sources of income, as you can see from his parliamentary register.”