Reform donor Harborne holds Pentagon fuel deals and £400m QinetiQ stake

Farage’s £5m gift and Reform defence pledges raise conflict-of-interest questions

The network at the centre of the Guardian investigation is AML Global, the jet-fuel brokerage Harborne founded in Thailand after stints at McKinsey, PepsiCo, and the markets. AML Global began by supplying civilian private-jet clients before turning to the US military — the world’s largest single consumer of fossil fuels. Publicity material from its Northern Irish partner, Jet Assist, says no other company supplies the US military with jet fuel in more places beyond its borders, reaching 62 by the end of 2025. Published US government data shows AML Global’s Pentagon contracts total more than $140 million since 2013, with the contracts surging late in Donald Trump’s first term and continuing since.

AML Global’s leadership draws heavily on former US military personnel. Vice-president Scott Elder is a retired US Air Force colonel whose LinkedIn profile records that he served as a “host nation liaison” for the Pentagon at the US embassy in Bangkok from 1996 — the year Harborne arrived in Thailand — to 2011, the year Harborne took Thai citizenship. A businessman who works with the venture describes it as “strengthened by former US Department of Defense specialists and retired US military pilots, bringing decades of operational and strategic expertise to every mission”. Harborne’s lawyers say AML Global now operates “over 1,200 locations worldwide” and no longer arranges the supply of jet fuel produced in Russia.

Early filings trace connections between Harborne’s business and former UK security personnel. In 2006 he joined the board of Subsea Resources, a deep-sea-salvage company whose filings describe his £1.6 million loan as “made on an informal basis without legal documentation”. A co-director who joined the same day was David Charters, listed on official filings as a “Foreign Office veteran” — a styling frequently used for MI6 officers — and described at a security conference as “a former MI6 intelligence officer”. When Harborne gave up his board seat months later, his replacement was Tim McClement, a recently retired Royal Navy vice-admiral whose exploits included sinking the Belgrano as a submariner in the Falklands war. A fellow British director of an early AML Global vehicle, Arthur Napolitano, had trained at Sandhurst, served in the Queen’s Dragoon Guards, and later served in the Sultan of Oman’s land forces.

In the UK, Harborne has assembled a still more sensitive portfolio. He is the largest shareholder in QinetiQ, with a 15% stake worth about £400 million. QinetiQ was privatised from the Ministry of Defence under Tony Blair and, under MoD contracts, remains integral to UK war-fighting capabilities — running Hebridean missile-launch sites, developing stealth capabilities for nuclear submarines, maintaining the RAF’s Typhoon fighter fleet, and building the drones and robots that the company says are “redefining warfare”. Harborne has since expanded his UK military-tech footprint, acquiring shares in a company set up by a former Royal Marines reservist to develop “Iron Man” combat suits, and in a rival to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite service.

Harborne’s reach has extended into UK foreign policy beyond funding. The Guardian previously revealed that Harborne accompanied Boris Johnson on a September 2023 visit to Ukraine after giving the former Conservative prime minister £1 million. Jamie Shawyer, a Gulfstream pilot who has worked on Harborne’s aviation ventures for 20 years, appears to have flown the pair to Poland, from where they proceeded overland to Kyiv. Harborne later told the Daily Telegraph that Johnson arranged for him to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, telling the Ukrainian leader: “I’m absolutely passionate that Europe has to defend itself.”

The network extends into Thailand. Paul Chambers, a Thai-military expert at the University of Oklahoma who left the country last year under pressure from the army, said Harborne maintains a business relationship with the Royal Thai Air Force through AML Global and Sherriff Global Group, which appears to run Harborne’s private-jet fleet. “The Royal Thai Air Force interacts with these firms for global logistical support, international flight operations, and overall air transport administration,” Chambers said. Neither Harborne’s lawyers nor the Thai air force answered questions about the relationship.

Reform’s June 2024 general-election manifesto committed the party to increasing defence spending and to introducing “incentives and tax breaks to boost the UK defence industry”. It pledged to “improve equipment self-sufficiency and manufacture world-class products for export” and to set up a “Joint Acquisition Corp” that would “ensure world-class procurement”. Each of those commitments, the Guardian’s reporting suggests, would appear to benefit QinetiQ and potentially other Harborne military interests.

Farage has publicly saluted his benefactor’s military holdings. “Christopher Harborne is an immensely successful man,” Farage told the Triggernometry podcast in July. “They all say crypto, but actually that is but a part of what this guy does. I think there are some things that are known in public, such as his big stake that he holds in QinetiQ, the defence technology company. I think he probably owns the biggest jet refuelling operation in the world, plus his crypto investments.”

Farage has also taken public positions on matters tied to Harborne’s business interests. When Trump bombed Iran, he urged Prime Minister Keir Starmer to commit British forces to the campaign. After Trump expressed disquiet with British plans to hand the Chagos Islands — home to a US-UK military base — to Mauritius, Farage boarded one of Harborne’s private jets and flew to the region in protest. Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, has said his party would rip up the deal if it takes power. Both Farage and Harborne say the £5 million gift in 2024 was “unconditional”, and Farage decided he did not need to declare it after he won a parliamentary seat.

A Reform spokesperson said Harborne had not discussed defence spending, defence policy or foreign policy with Farage or party officials and denied that his megadonor status created a conflict of interest on defence spending policy. Harborne’s lawyers at Schillings said his commercial interests are “unconnected in any way whatsoever” with his political affiliations, and that he “has not sought to influence any politician to support any of his commercial business interests”. Sam Power, a political-funding expert at the University of Bristol, said: “It doesn’t necessarily follow that Reform will have policies that will benefit Harborne’s interests in the military-industrial complex. But it warrants a spotlight. It will be interesting if Reform’s policies start aligning with Christopher Harborne in this area as they have in cryptocurrency.”

Documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists show that bankers filed a suspicious-activity report with US authorities in 2014 saying they had been “unable to identify the economic, business or lawful purpose” for large payments Harborne made related to crypto dealings under his Thai name, Chakrit Sakunkrit. Such reports are evidence of concern, not wrongdoing, and Harborne denies any impropriety. The Pentagon, for its part, continues to treat AML Global as a trusted supplier of jet fuel across 62 locations. “The government vets these companies,” said Jerry McGinn, a military procurement expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies thinktank in Washington. “They take this very seriously.”