Ben Delo, the founder of BitMEX and a person pardoned by Trump, has donated £4 million ($5.3 million) to Nigel Farage's Reform UK party.

Delo announced the donation in a Telegraph opinion piece published on April 8. He described the donation as his first act of political activism.

Why the pardoned crypto founder supports Reform UK

Delo founded the cryptocurrency derivatives exchange BitMEX in 2014. In 2022, he admitted to violating the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) because the platform did not maintain anti-money laundering controls.

He paid $10 million in civil fines and received 30 months' probation. President Donald Trump pardoned Delo and his co-founders Arthur Hayes and Samuel Reed in March 2025.

In his op-ed, Delo described his donations as a response to what he saw as a crisis of integrity in British public life.

He wrote that Reform UK is the only party willing to tackle the country's problems head-on.

“Since the beginning of this year, I have donated £4 million to help Nigel Farage build Reform UK into a real alternative government party,” The Telegraph reported, quoting Delo.

Delo plans to circumvent the Labour foreign donations cap.

The UK government introduced an annual cap of £100,000 on political donations from British citizens living abroad on March 25. A ban on cryptocurrency donations also came into effect.

These actions followed an independent investigation into the influence of foreign funds on British politics, led by former senior civil servant Philip Rycroft.

Delo, currently residing in Hong Kong, stated that he plans to move back to Britain to circumvent the donation cap and continue funding the Reform campaign.

Reform UK has received £12 million from Christopher Harborne, a British investor living in Thailand, over the past year. The new donation cap may significantly limit Harborne's future support.