Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system
Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features
SUBSCRIBE TODAY
Reform UK’s leader Nigel Farage has repeatedly attacked what he calls “globalist” figures getting involved in British politics.
However, it now emerges that one of the principal funders of Farage’s anti-migrant, anti-EU, anti-human-rights, anti-drugs and anti-globalist party, is a Nigerian-Lebanese billionaire with Irish citizenship who once advised both Amnesty International and the World Economic Forum, and whose overseas fortune stems partly from a cannabis enterprise in South Africa.
Bassim Haidar, a telecoms and fintech magnate whose wealth spans Africa, the Gulf and Europe, is now one of Reform UK’s biggest donors. Between January and April 2025, Electoral Commission filings record four cash donations from him totalling £225,000. These are the first tranches of a £1 million pledge trumpeted from Haidar by the party earlier this year.
His gifts have made him central to Reform’s finances but also emblematic of its contradictions.
Haidar’s public life seems to be a series of sizeable pivots. In November 2024 he told The Telegraph that he had “left” Britain, lamenting that Labour’s abolition of the non-dom tax regime had made the country “no longer interesting” for wealthy investors. “I leave with a very heavy heart,” he said. “It is home in many ways.”
The paper described him selling off his £80 million London property portfolio and relocating to Greece and Dubai. If he had have left, this would be a concern under Electoral Commission rules given his subsequent payments to Reform UK. Foreign political donations are banned in the UK.
There is no suggestion that his donations breach electoral law, however. The Electoral Commission told Byline Times that an individual remains a permissible donor while on the UK electoral register, and Haidar remains so listed. It seems that either Haidar or The Telegraph had trumpeted his imminent departure prematurely.
Nigel Farage Says Minimum Wage Should Be Cut for Young People
The Reform leader said cutting the minimum wage for young people would boost business, as he attacked plans to raise taxes on the wealthy
Adam Bienkov
Asked for further clarification on some of these points, Haidar responded that “any inaccuracies published about me will be referred to my legal counsel.” Yet the inconsistencies Byline Times sought to resolve originated not in this paper’s reporting but in The Telegraph’s own interview, in which Haidar reportedly claimed to have “left” Britain. The Telegraph also did not respond to this paper’s request for comment.
What we do know is that, almost a year later, Haidar is still listed at his One Hyde Park flat address and so can legally fund Reform UK. Haidar told Byline Times that he remained a UK resident, that his donations were “100 per cent legal and comply with electoral law,” and that he merely “plans to leave sometime in the future, not determined yet.” In other words, the exile had not quite departed.
He has, however, reportedly cancelled plans to list his billion-dollar fintech company, Optasia, on the London Stock Exchange, opting instead for South Africa.
These discrepancies between his public statements prompts questions. Companies House lists his nationality as Irish, yet he was born in Nigeria to Lebanese parents. When Byline Times asked how and when he acquired Irish citizenship (by descent, naturalisation or investment) he declined to comment.
Haidar’s ideological route maps his business trajectory: global in practice, nationalist in political donation. Once a Conservative donor under Rishi Sunak, he later declared that the Conservatives had “lost their way” and shifted allegiance to Farage’s insurgent right, hailing him as the man to restore Britain’s “glory.”
Reform UK has built its identity rejecting the kind of world Haidar represents. It rails against “globalist elites,” calls for the wit…