Nigel Farage has claimed that Russian intelligence services hacked his phone using “spear phishing” techniques and leaked the story of his undisclosed £5 million personal gift from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne to The Guardian – in a claim The Guardian describes as “an absurd attempt to deflect attention from legitimate scrutiny of his financial affairs,” and which arrived in the same week the Defence Secretary wrote to Farage asking whether Harborne’s aviation fuel company had complied with UK sanctions on Russian energy.
The claim marks the most dramatic intervention yet in the rolling financial story that has now been running for over three weeks. It introduces a new protagonist – the Kremlin – to a story that already involves a Thailand-based crypto billionaire, a Parliamentary Standards investigation, a £1.4 million cash property purchase, an I’m A Celebrity fee that his company’s accounts appear to contradict, ten Newsnight interview requests and a thumbs down emoji.
What Farage claimed
A party source told the Daily Mail on Sunday that Farage became “intensely suspicious” he had been compromised by “foreign state actors” after last month’s Guardian revelation about the Harborne donation. The source said: “Only four people in the world knew about the donation, and so Nigel decided to submit his mobile phone for forensic analysis by counter-espionage experts. They concluded that hostile state actors, almost certainly linked to Moscow, had used ‘spear phishing’ tactics to compromise his phone, email and bank accounts. It bore all the sophisticated hallmarks of a nation state actor using destabilisation techniques in the run-up to this month’s local elections.”
Spear phishing is a targeted form of cyberattack in which hackers disguise themselves as a known contact and send links that install malware on the victim’s device.
Farage himself said: “These actions by Russia are deeply concerning and highlight the threat they pose to British security.” He also said the revelation “brings into question The Guardian’s judgment and whether Reform can cooperate with them in future.”
The specific logic offered for why Russia would target Farage: he has angered Putin with his support for NATO, while Harborne is himself on Moscow’s radar for accompanying Boris Johnson on a trip to Ukraine to highlight the country’s plight after the 2022 invasion. Johnson wrote a reference for Harborne in October 2023 describing him as “a long-standing supporter of NATO and Ukraine.”
The Guardian’s response
The Guardian contested Farage’s allegations directly. A source at the newspaper said: “This is an absurd claim and an attempt to deflect attention from legitimate scrutiny of his financial affairs. Nigel Farage is once again hiding behind a baseless attack on the media rather than facing up to scrutiny from journalists and politicians. He has repeatedly failed to answer serious public interest questions about the £5 million gift he received.”
The Guardian broke the original story about the undisclosed gift, as we reported in our full investigation coverage. The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner has opened a formal investigation into whether Farage broke Commons rules by failing to declare it. The Electoral Commission is considering a separate inquiry.
The pattern of Farage’s responses to questions about the gift has been documented across multiple platforms. As we reported in our ‘We’ve asked ten times’ piece, he has sent Newsnight a thumbs down emoji in response to ten interview requests. He drove away from Channel 4’s Clare Fallon in Winstanley, as we reported in our Channel 4 car getaway piece. His explanations for the £1.4 million cash property purchase have shifted from I’m A Celebrity fees to “multiple sources of income,” as we reported in our FT accounts analysis.
The Defence Secretary’s letter – and the Russia-Harborne connection
The more consequential Russia-related development may be not Farage’s hacking claim but Defence Secretary John Healey’s letter to him, published separately.
Healey wrote to Farage seeking assurances that AML Global – an aviation fuel company owned by Harborne – had “complied fully with all sanctions on Russian energy.” He also asked whether the Iran war might boost AML Global’s revenues.
The letter raises a specific and significant question: if Harborne’s aviation fuel business had any involvement in Russian energy transactions during the period when UK sanctions applied, the £5 million personal gift he gave to Farage takes on a different legal dimension. Sanctions compliance is not an abstract issue.
Farage has not yet responded publicly to Healey’s letter.
Whether the hacking claim is credible
Russian state hacking of senior UK politicians is documented. In 2022 the Mail on Sunday reported that Liz Truss was hacked when Foreign Secretary – a year’s worth of messages including sensitive Ukraine military strategy information was compromised. Boris Johnson experienced the leak of more than 2,000 files covering his Downing Street years. George Cottrell, a senior Farage adviser, had his phone “critically compromised” while working for a pro-NATO party in Montenegro – US intelligence sources are reported to have told him Moscow was behind it.
These are real precedents. Russian state interference in British politics is a real and documented phenomenon. A hacking claim from a senior British political figure is not inherently implausible.
What is also real is The Guardian’s point about the timing. The claim emerged specifically at the moment the financial questions surrounding Farage are most acute: formal Parliamentary Standards investigation, Electoral Commission consideration, accounts that challenge his property explanation, ten unanswered interview requests. The claim that Moscow leaked the story does not, if true, change any of the underlying facts about what the £5 million was, where it came from, what Farage’s obligations were to declare it, or where the £1.4 million cash property purchase came from.
It is entirely possible that both things are true: that Farage’s phone was hacked by Russian actors and that the underlying story is one he should answer.
Reform’s overtime policy
Separately, Reform announced a new economic policy alongside the hacking claim: a pledge to abolish all income tax on overtime worked above 40 hours per week, up to a total annual income of £75,000 – covering an estimated 90% of workers.
The policy, costed at £5 billion a year, would be funded from Reform’s promised £40 billion in annual cuts including capping foreign aid and ending welfare entitlements for foreign nationals. Reform has framed it as a “hard work bonus” specifically designed to appeal to working-class communities in northern England and the Midlands – including directly in Makerfield, where Burnham is fighting the byelection on 18 June.
Workers in the North East, Yorkshire, the East Midlands and the West Midlands work above-average overtime – making the policy’s geographic targeting explicit. As we reported in our Burnham land value tax piece, Burnham is simultaneously proposing to address economic inequality through tax reform on land and wealth. The Reform counter is to address it through tax cuts on work. Both campaigns are now directly engaging the economic argument in Makerfield.
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