Nigel Farage secretly agreed to return as Reform’s leader months before the 2024 general election, according to a Sunday Times investigation, an agreement that directly contradicts his own account of when he decided to come back.
Farage negotiated the pact with Richard Tice, Reform’s leader at the time, in March and April 2024. George Cottrell, the convicted fraudster who was secretly funding Farage during this period, oversaw the discussions.
What the deal actually said
Once Farage became leader, Reform would repay or write off more than £1m in outstanding loans the party owed Tice’s company. Farage and Cottrell presented the agreement to the party’s treasurer, Mehrtash A’Zami, in mid-May, weeks before the election was even called.
That timeline is the problem. Farage has consistently said he had no plans to return to politics until June 2024, and has used that claim to defend not declaring the £5m gift from Christopher Harborne and other benefits he received before he became an MP. If he’d already signed off on a leadership return in April, that defence gets a lot harder to sustain.
Reform sources acknowledged the deal exists but say it was drafted for if Farage became leader, not when. Asked why he’d sign such an agreement with no intention of returning, they said it simply kept his options open, and that Farage had expected to spend the year campaigning for Trump instead.
Why the timing matters for the £5m gift
MPs have to declare any benefit connected to their political activities received in the 12 months before election. Farage told the Triggernometry podcast last month: “At that period of my life, from 2021 to the third of June 2024, I was a broadcaster, I was someone that appeared on celebrity TV programmes, I was somebody that promoted some financial market products, but I was an influencer, I wasn’t in politics.”
A’Zami tells a different story. “I was told about the agreement before the election was called. It commenced when Nigel came back. The essence was the schedule of repayments. I was told to implement it and acted to fulfil it in line with my responsibilities.”
How the plan actually came together
Rishi Sunak called the snap election on 22 May 2024. By then, Farage had already been working towards a leadership return for months. In mid-May, he discussed the details with Cottrell and A’Zami in an office near Buckingham Palace.
A’Zami, who first met Cottrell as a teenager, had been Reform’s treasurer since 2019 but had drifted, spending much of his time in Dubai. Cottrell asked him to come back specifically because Farage was planning a comeback.
Farage explained A’Zami would handle repaying and writing off the £1m-plus Tice had lent the party through his company since 2020, money that had kept Reform’s Ashby-de-la-Zouch headquarters running. Previously, those loans were interest-free, repayable “upon request” and “only if the party cash position allows.” Farage now set out an actual schedule: regular six-figure instalments, or converting loans into donations, bringing the £1,083,000 debt down to zero over the following year.
Almost nobody else in the party knew. Ben Habib, then Tice’s deputy, said he’d had no idea “financial deals were being struck at the top of the party” and that his trust had been “abused.”
When the election was called, Farage initially said he’d been “wrong-footed” and wouldn’t stand, saying he’d instead spend his time “doing my bit” for Tice’s campaign. Days later, after pressure from across the right, he announced on 3 June that he was back as leader and would stand in Clacton. Tice was demoted to deputy.
A week after that, on 10 June, Reform paid Tice £200,000.
The money trail gets murkier from here
The same day Reform paid out £200,000, it also took in £250,000, then another £250,000 two days later. On paper, that £500,000 came from Britain Means Business, another Tice company. In reality, immediately before those payments, Tice had received money from Fiona Cottrell, George’s mother, who’d herself received a matching sum from her son via a crypto exchange days earlier.
Those payments, made days before Reform’s bank account was frozen and suspicious activity reports went to the National Crime Agency, are now part of the Metropolitan Police’s investigation. They also explain something that looked odd on its own: Tice giving and receiving six-figure sums from Reform on the exact same day.
According to party sources, officials didn’t realise a serious mistake had been made until autumn 2024. Reform’s first £200,000 repayment hadn’t gone to Tisun Investments, the company that had actually made the loan, it went to Tice’s personal bank account instead.
Giving the Electoral Commission incorrect information is an offence. Reform denies breaking any laws, and points out A’Zami held responsibility for the party’s finances at the time. Party sources say officials wanted to correct the error and tell the regulator immediately, believing it would treat an honest mistake leniently. That correction never happened. The Electoral Commission was never told the money had gone to Tice personally rather than his company. Reform and Tisun Investments filed accounts saying otherwise.
Reform sources say Tice later moved the £200,000 from his personal account into his company account, effectively settling it. When exactly that happened isn’t clear.
A’Zami’s version: “I was told the payment had been made and relied on my staff. I included that in my own records to the Electoral Commission. When I learnt money had been paid to a source other than the company, I tried to remedy the matter and notify the commission, but was stopped. I was not allowed to make it right.”
He left the party by February 2025, returning to his business career in Dubai, following disagreements over how payments and invoices were being handled.
Where the debt actually ended up
Repayments to Tisun kept going as planned. Between January and April, Reform repaid Tice £270,000. In that same window, Fiona Cottrell donated to the party again, this time in her own name, £250,000.
Tice ended up receiving less than half the money back, £470,000, and writing off the rest, roughly £613,000, as retrospective donations. The balance Reform owed dropped to zero. Why Tice’s company didn’t get repaid in full isn’t clear; sources suggested the original plan had been to pay it all back.
The Electoral Commission has acknowledged payments were misrecorded, saying Reform “did not clearly register repayments against previous loans,” that a “reporting error” led to at least one “incorrect” public record, and that it’s “amending our database” to correct the information.
What happens next
Farage stood down as Clacton’s MP 48 hours after the Sunday Times first revealed the extent of his relationship with Cottrell, and is now standing for re-election in the resulting byelection later this month. If he wins, he faces two separate investigations: the existing inquiry into the £5m Harborne gift, and a new one into undisclosed benefits from Cottrell. If he’s sanctioned for failing to declare either, he could be removed from the Commons entirely, triggering a second byelection.
Farage has consistently dismissed scrutiny of his finances as “irrelevant” and part of an establishment stitch-up. Asked about the Cottrell funding specifically, he reached for the same line he’s used before on Harborne: “literally no one’s business.”
A Reform spokesperson said: “This appears to be further misinformation based either on unlawfully obtained documents or mischief-making by disgruntled former staff members.” They said “all relevant repayments were declared to the Electoral Commission” and that Farage’s decision to return to frontline politics “changed only in early June.” They added that A’Zami, as treasurer at the time, “had ultimate responsibility for and complete oversight of the party’s finances,” controlled the finance team, made the payment, and compiled and submitted the reporting himself.
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