Nigel Farage did not declare financial benefits provided to him by his long-standing supporter George Cottrell in the year before he was elected, the Sunday Times reports today.

Cottrell is a crypto entrepreneur who was convicted of wire fraud in 2017. Farage is already under investigation over the £5 million given to him by crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne. He says that money was a personal gift, and his spokesperson has described the Sunday Times‘s story as ‘baseless and contrived’.

On Sky News, Trevor Phillips asked Reform’s Robert Jenrick whether Cottrell had been paying for Farage’s security. Jenrick accused the Sunday Times of being a ‘Labour supporting newspaper’ that has ‘dredged up’ an old story. He said that Cottrell is an old friend of Farage who supported him before he became a member of parliament, and accused the media of being ‘fixated’ on the Reform leader. Phillips suggested that the British public would be interested in knowing what company a potential future prime minister is keeping. Jenrick claimed that Andy Burnham is not receiving any scrutiny, and said the public want change, not ‘muckraking about Nigel Farage’.

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