Nigel Farage’s senior aide suggested a way to get around electoral law to secure a foreign donation of £500,000 for Reform UK, according to undercover filming broadcast by Channel 4.
Dan Jukes was filmed meeting a man posing as the British-based son of a rich American businessman.
Electoral law sets out that to be a permissible donor to a UK political party you must be a UK registered voter, or a company registered in the UK.
In this instance, the son would be a permissible donor, his father would not be.
The undercover filming was done by a group called Verbatim Investigations, which was founded by journalists from the Centre for Climate Reporting. Channel 4 News say they have verified the material they were given and chose to broadcast.
Reform UK denies any wrongdoing and claims to have “been the target of a hoax perpetuated by foreign funded climate change activists”.
The reporter posing as the son of the American donor is filmed raising a concern that his father wouldn’t be able to directly donate to the party within the law.
Filmed standing outside a pub in Westminster, Jukes said “you do realise that you can do it?”
Channel 4 say Jukes was suggesting that the donation could be in the UK-based son’s name, although the money would have come from his American father.
“Actually that does strike me as a solution,” Jukes continues.
He then claims they have done it several times before, in exchanges bleeped out but which appear to refer to other instances where this mechanism had been used before.
“That’s one of the ways in which we do it,” he is recorded as saying.
Reform UK have launched an internal investigation into Jukes. They would not confirm if he remained a party spokesperson.
Later, Channel 4 broadcast footage from a lunch in Clacton in Essex, with both the reporter posing as the UK-based son, and an actor – his supposed American father. Opposite them are both Dan Jukes and the Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.
Farage says “it’s all above board” after the son has told him he has been in discussions with both Jukes and Reform’s Head of Policy, James Orr about it for some time.
“I’ll be the registered donor,” the son says. “But then dad will send the money to me, and then as soon as that’s done and all those conversations are had the money is available.”
“Thank you. Well, both of you. Thank you,” Farage is heard saying.
Orr is also now the subject of an internal Reform UK investigation.