Nigel Farage’s attempt to reach the Chagos Islands military base was made on a private jet that appears to be linked to Reform UK’s mega-donor Christopher Harborne, it has emerged.

Harborne, who has donated £12m to Reform UK, has links to two charter planes that flew Farage to the Maldives and, separately, a group of Chagossian campaigners to Sri Lanka, before they attempted to reach the archipelago by boat.

The Thailand-based cryptocurrency and aviation investor did not reply to requests for comment about whether he owns the planes that facilitated the stunt. The trip ended in failure for the Reform UK leader after he was unable to reach the islands without permission from the UK government to access the military base.

Farage said he undertook the trip to highlight the plight of the Chagossians, whose families were removed from the islands in the 1960s and are seeking to return. He also opposes the UK government’s decision to hand sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius to comply with international law while continuing to lease the base from them.

Although Farage did not reach the islands, it generated attention for Reform as the party sought to set the political agenda on the Chagos Islands controversy.

While a precise equivalent cost for the trip is unavailable, private jets of the size of those used would typically cost upwards of £10,000 an hour between the two.

The disclosure underlines the importance of Harborne, one of the biggest donors in British political history, to Farage’s operation. It emerged this week that he donated a further £3m to Reform in the last quarter of 2025 after a record £9m gift last summer. The intensely private mega-donor’s ongoing generosity is likely to renew demands for greater transparency into the sources of donations in British politics.

Farage has in the past raised questions about the optics of donors providing funding to leading political figures. When Keir Starmer was revealed to have accepted more than £16,000 for work clothing from the Labour peer Waheed Alli, he said: “It’s just a very bad look for somebody who said everything was going to change.”

The FT reported last weekend that Harborne funded a boat from Thailand that undertook a five-day voyage to take the party from Sri Lanka to the archipelago, and was unsuccessful in bringing Farage to join the Chagossians.

The two planes are Dassault Falcons owned by the British Virgin Islands company Black Panther Aviation. They are operated by a firm called Sundance Operations, based in Guernsey, whose director has worked for Harborne’s aviation firm AML Global, according to media reports, and for another of his companies, according to offshore leak documents.

Sundance Operations, which operates a fleet of Dassault and Eclipse planes from a hangar in Bournemouth, was previously called Sherriff Aviation. Harborne has an international group called Sherriff Group of Companies.

The two Dassault Falcon planes have recently made journeys to Bangkok, where Harborne has business interests, and one of them has gone to Koh Samui, an island where he owns a wellness retreat.

The size of Harborne’s donations to Reform have prompted campaign groups including Spotlight on Corruption and Transparency International to renew calls for a cap on political donations.

The businessman was previously one of the single biggest donors in politics when he gave more than £10m in tranches to Farage’s Brexit party to fund its 2019 election campaign. He subsequently donated £1m to the office of Boris Johnson after the former prime minister left Downing Street and accompanied him on a trip to Ukraine.

Farage also accepted £28,000 from Harborne to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Harborne, who began his career as a management consultant, lived in Thailand for about 20 years, where he is also known under the Thai name of Chakrit Sakunkrit. He has a stake in the defence tech firm Qinetiq, as well as AML Global, an aviation-fuel company.

Reform UK said the funding of the Chagos Islands trip would be declared in the usual way to authorities. Harborne did not reply to requests for comment.