Nigel Farage’s claim that a Russian hack was behind a Guardian report on the £5m gift he received from a crypto billionaire has been described as “without any merit” by a former head of the National Cyber Security Centre.
Ciaran Martin, founding chief executive of the agency, said Farage’s allegation, if true, would have major implications for UK policy towards Russia but that the Reform UK leader had yet to provide “a shred of evidence”. It is understood that Farage is yet to ask the NCSC to investigate his apparent belief that the Guardian’s revelation of the donation by crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne was the result of a Russian “hack-and-leak” operation.
Martin said such an operation by the Kremlin would amount to an “unprecedentedly aggressive intervention” into Britain’s democracy and that Farage should both contact the NCSC to investigate and make public the technical evidence he has for his claim. “An aspiring prime minister has essentially claimed that Russia has launched an unprecedentedly aggressive intervention – a malicious intervention – in British politics, and he’s not produced a shred of evidence to support that claim,” Martin said.
Farage’s allegation followed the launch of an inquiry by parliament’s commissioner for standards into his failure to declare the gift made by Harborne in 2024. Parliamentary transparency rules require MPs to register political gifts and donations above a certain threshold. The Reform leader claims Harborne’s gift was exempt as it was both personal and for his security.
Over the weekend, a Reform UK source claimed analysis of Farage’s phone by “counter-espionage experts” suggested his phone, email and bank accounts were compromised by hostile actors, almost certainly linked to Moscow. A spokesperson for the Guardian described Farage’s claim as “an attempt to deflect attention from legitimate scrutiny of his financial affairs”.
Martin said the onus was on Farage to report the matter to the appropriate authorities given the serious implications for the country and its democracy. “What he has described would not just be hacking by Russia, but what we call a hack-and-leak operation, which is a different thing. It is way more serious because it violates international norms, and it’s a direct intervention aimed at destabilising our democracy and our politics in a way that spying isn’t,” he added.
