Revealed: Reform mega-donor’s jet fuel business linked to refineries using Russian oil Reform mega-donor's jet fuel firm linked to refineries using Russian oil
Christopher Harborne's business interests have come under heightened scrutiny after he gave huge sums to Reform UK and its leader, Nigel Farage. Photo: George Cracknell Wright/LNPChristopher Harborne’s. . .
Christopher Harborne's business interests have come under heightened scrutiny after he gave huge sums to Reform UK and its leader, Nigel Farage. Photo: George Cracknell Wright/LNPChristopher Harborne’s company AML Global is contracted to fill US military planes with fuel made by refineries that use Russian, Iranian, and Venezuelan crudeChristopher Harborne's business interests have come under heightened scrutiny after he gave huge sums to Reform UK and its leader, Nigel Farage. Photo: George Cracknell Wright/LNPRevealed: Reform mega-donor’s jet fuel business linked to refineries using Russian oilChristopher Harborne’s company AML Global is contracted to fill US military planes with fuel made by refineries that use Russian, Iranian, and Venezuelan crudeChristopher Harborne's business interests have come under heightened scrutiny after he gave huge sums to Reform UK and its leader, Nigel Farage. Photo: George Cracknell Wright/LNP00hA company owned by billionaireReform UKdonorChristopher Harborneis contracted to supply the US military with jet fuel from refineries that take oil from Russia and Iran. Harborne’saviation fuel brokerage,AML Global, holdsactive contractsworthup to £82mto arrange the refueling ofUS military aircraftat commercial airports around the world. At least four refinerieslisted in the contracts as sources of AML’s jet fuel have importedcrude oilfromRussia, Iran, or Venezuela in recent years, an investigation byUnearthedand the research organisationData Deskhas revealed. Susan Hawley, executive director of the campaign groupSpotlight on Corruption, said the findings raised “real questions about whether a major political party in the UK is being bankrolled by money made from selling fuel sourced from states that are hostile to our democracy”. AML Global has had asanctions policyin place sincemid-April 2024at the latest, which states that it“will not arrange nor facilitate the supply or use” of any aviation fuel believed to have been sourced from Russia, Iran or Venezuela. Most of the shipments identified byUnearthedand Data Desk took placeafter that date. Christopher Harborne’s enormous wealth already casts a long shadow over Nigel Farage and Reform UK– we cannot afford to ignore the damage this kind of money and influence can cause—Green Party MP Ellie ChownsThere is no suggestion, however, that AML breached this sanctions policy, becausethe refineries in question are not based in any of the listed countries. The policy does not appear to prohibit the use of jet fuel refined from sanctioned crude. Likewise, there is no suggestion that the company has breached UK or international sanctions: the UK’s sanctions on Russia, for example,still includeanotorious loopholethat allows the purchase of jet fuel made from Russian oil, provided it is refined in “third countries” like India or Turkey. However, the findings have raised further concerns about Harborne’s business interests, which have come under intense scrutiny since it was revealed that the Thailand-based billionairegaveReform leader Nigel Farage £5mshortly before he decided to stand in the 2024 election. “This raises even more serious questions for Reform UK,” Conservative Party chairman KevinHollinrakeMP told the Times newspaper. “Not only is Nigel Farage a Putin apologist, but his party’s biggest financial backer, the man who dropped £5m into Farage’s personal bank account, now appears to be profiting from fuel derived from Russian crude. ”Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokespersonCalum MillerMP said Reform should not accept “a single penny more from Christopher Harborne” until they can prove “their party coffers are not being funded through the back door by Russian crude”. He added that Farage needed to “come clean immediately about whether his party is profiting from a firm that has potentially helped fund Putin’s war in Ukraine, and the Standards Commissioner should investigate whether anything has been promised to Harborne on Reform foreign policy in exchange for his money. ”Nigel Farage is under investigation by the parliamentary commissioner standards for failing to declare a £5m gift from Harborne. Photo: Martin Pope/Getty ImagesIn May, the Labour government’s then-defence secretaryJohn Healeywrote to Farageseeking assurances that none of the profits which contributed to his £5m gift“derived from transactions with Russian state-linked energy companies”. Healey also asked for confirmation that no fuel“sourced fromRussian-controlled refineries”had passed through AML Global’s supply chain. AML Globalsaid in responsethat it complied fully with all UK and international sanctions and had screened its business partners to ensure the same. A Reform UK spokesperson this week told the Times that no part of Harborne’s £5m gift to Farage was drawn from money paid out from AML. However, the party otherwise declined to comment on the findings of the investigation. Farage iscurrentlyunder investigationby the parliamentary commissioner for standardsfor failing to declare the money he received from Harborne in the register of members’ interests. The Reform leader hassaid he was under no obligation to declare the money, because he received it before becoming an MP. Separately to the money he has gifted Farage personally, Harborne isby far Reform’s biggest financial backer. Last year, he donatedat least £12mto the radical right party, including a£9m donation in Augustthat was reportedly thelargest sum ever given to a British political party by a living person. In thefirst quarter of 2026, the cryptocurrency investor pumpeda further £3minto Reform,just beforethe governmentintroduced a cap of £100,000on political donations by British citizens living overseas. AML and Christopher Harborne have been approached for comment. The refining loopholeUnearthedobtainedeight active contractsawarded to AML Global between2023 and 2026by theDefense Logistics Agency(DLA), a USgovernmentagency responsible forprocuring fuel and other supplies for military operations. The contracts cover refuelling services for USmilitary and governmentaircraft atmore than 30 airportsacrossAfrica, Asia and the Pacific. The contracts identify therefuelling companiesworking with AML Global to provide the fuel, along with therefineries that supply it. Fuel from these refineries is delivered into the airports’ fuel infrastructure, where it is kept in pooled storage facilities. Any aircraft refuelling company at an airport will usually be supplied from the same pool. Using data from commodity-tracking serviceKpler,Unearthedand Data Desk traced crude oil deliveries to those refineries. The analysis identifiedfour refinerieslisted in active AML Global contracts that have received more than62m tonnesof crude oil fromRussia, Iran, or Venezuelaafter the relevant contracts began. The overwhelming majorityof that total –86%– was Russian oil delivered to theJamnagar refinery complexin India, the flagship facility of billionaireMukesh Ambani’sReliance Industries. The refinery receivedover 53m tonnesof Russian crudefrom the start of 2024 up to 28 May this year, and a further6. 4mtonnes from Venezuela. The facility also imported a cargo of277,000 tonnes of Iranian crude delivered during a temporary US sanctions waiver that allowed India to resume limited imports from Iran. AML Global has a deal to supply US militaryplaneswith fuel sourced from the Jamnagar refinery at an airport inAbuja, Nigeria. The contract is worthup to £653,000, and runs fromJanuary 2024 to the end of September next year. A US Air Force C-130 cargo plane refuelling at a military air base. Harborne’s aviation fuel brokerage, AML Global, holds contracts worth up to £82m to refuel US military aircraft at commercial airports around the world. Photo: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty ImagesReliance hascontinuedimportinglarge volumes of Russian crudesince Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, taking advantage ofdiscounted pricesand a Western sanctions regime that generallytargets Russian crude exports rather than fuels refined in third countries. Much of the fuel produced in this way has been exported toEuropeandthe UK. At thestart of this year the EUmoved to close thisrefining loopholebybanningthe import of “refined oil products derived from Russian crude”. When a donor’s international commercial interests intersect with sanctioned jurisdictions, the potential for conflicts of interest – or just the appearance of them – is obvious—Steve Goodrich, Transparency International UKThe UK government had intended to follow suit with asanctions package introduced in May. However,at the last minute itdelayedthe banon Russian-derived jet fuel and diesel, amid concerns about potential fuel shortages caused by the US-Israeli war with Iran. Svitlana Romanko,executive director of Ukrainian groupRazom We Stand, which campaigns against the trade in Russian oil and gas, said the refining loophole was “not a loophole – it’s a highway”. She continued: “Russian crude goes into refineries in third countries, and ‘clean’ jet fuel and diesel come out the other side, stripped of their origin on paper but not of their blood. ”Reliance is not the only source of fuel for AML’s deals that is using Russian crude. Harborne’s company has acontract worth up to £613,000to refuel US planes in the tiny AsiancountryofBrunei. Since the start of that contract, inAugust 2025,the local refinery that supplies the jet fuel has imported1. 6m tonnes of Russian crude. AML also has deals worth up to£3. 1m in totalto refuel US military aircraft at airports inGhanaandthe Philippines. The refineries listed as sources of that fuel have received a combined486,000 tonnes of crude from Russiasince the start of the contracts. With the exception of Reliance’s Jamnagar facilityeach of these refineries is listed as supplying aviation fuel to airports within its own country. To assess whether the airports were actively being used by the US military,Unearthedreviewed historical flight records onFlightradar24for all five airports during the relevant contract periods. This review found that multiple US military aircraft at each site since the contracts have been in effect. AtAccra International Airportin Ghana, for example, at least16 separate US military and government aircrafthad landed after AML’s contact with the DLA began there inFebruary 2024. Romanko toldUnearthed: “If these findings are accurate, they are as shameful as they are unsurprising. “The same military that stands as the backbone of Western security may have been flying on fuel whose profits flow back to the Kremlin’s war chest, the war chest paying for the missiles and drones that kill Ukrainian civilians every night. ”Unearthed has approached the DLA for comment. A ‘long shadow’Transparency campaigners and politicians toldUnearthedthe investigation demonstrated the need for further reform of UK rules around political donations. “When a party becomes dependent on a single wealthy backer, its reputation gets tied to theirs – and stories like this show exactly why that matters,” saidSteve Goodrich, head of research and investigations at the campaign groupTransparency International UK. “When a donor’s international commercial interests intersect with sanctioned jurisdictions, the potential for conflicts of interest – or just the appearance of them – is obvious. The only real protection is not letting any individual donor become indispensable in the first place – which is why the public rightly want a cap on what any one person can give. ”In March this year, the Labour government introduced an annual cap of £100,000 on political donations by British citizens living abroad. The move wasseen by Reformas an attempt by Labour to “choke off” funding for Reform from donors like Harborne and fellow cryptocurrency billionaire Ben Delo, who at the time was based in Hong Kong. However, there is still effectivelyno limiton the amount a UK-resident British citizen can donate. Green Party MPEllie Chownssaid Unearthed’s findings were “extremely troubling”, and demonstrated the risks that “opaque supply chains pose to democratic politics and defence contracting – especially in providing indirect support to authoritarian regimes like Russia”. She added: “Christopher Harborne’s enormous wealth already casts a long shadow over Nigel Farage and Reform UK – we cannot afford to ignore the damage this kind of money and influence can cause politics in the UK and abroad. The government must work urgently to bring in tougher rules around political donations and lobbying to stop politics being warped by powerful interests. ”A Labour Party spokesman said: “Sadly these latest revelations come as no surprise given Farage has previously said Putin is the leader he admires most. The scandal engulfing Farage and Reform isn’t going away – it’s time he put all the facts on the table over his secret £5 million gift and levelled with the public as to the true extent of his relationship with Christopher Harborne. ”