Christopher Harborne
British businessman and technology investor based in Thailand (born 1963)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Christopher Charles Sherriff Harborne (born December 1962) is a British-Thai billionaire businessman and technology investor based in Thailand.[1][2] He holds Thai citizenship under the name Chakrit Sakunkrit.[3] He is best known for filing a defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal for reporting related to his work in the cryptocurrency industry, as well as his donations to British political parties. He previously donated to the UK's Conservative Party and is the largest single donor to Reform UK.
Christopher Harborne | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 1962 (age 63) |
| Other name | Chakrit Sakunkrit |
| Citizenship | United Kingdom, Thailand |
| Education | Westminster School |
| Alma mater | Downing College, Cambridge INSEAD |
| Title | Chief Executive Officer |
Board member of | Sherriff Global Group |
In the Sunday Times Rich List 2026 ranking of the wealthiest people with UK residence, he was placed 6th with an estimated fortune of £18.177 billion.[4]
Early life and education
Christopher Harborne was born on 18 December 1962 in Mosborough, Sheffield, to Edgar Harborne, an insurance investor, and homemaker Joan. He is a descendant of English writer R. C. Sherriff and has two siblings, including his late sister Katharine.[5] He went to Westminster School. He took an MA and MEng from Downing College, Cambridge.[6] In 1988, he gained an MBA from the Institut européen d'administration des affaires (INSEAD).[7]
Career
Harborne worked for five years as a management consultant at McKinsey and Co., before running a research company in Asia. He describes himself as an "investor in new tech, including open software blockchain platforms".[8][9] He is the CEO of Sherriff Global Group which trades in private planes, and the owner of AML Global, a firm that sells aviation fuel.[10] He is a billionaire.[1][2] He has made a donation to enable the founding of INSEAD San Francisco and to create a Blockchain Research Fund.[7] He has set up a company, Singular AI Consulting Limited, with cryptocurrency miner Marco Streng.[8] As of December 2019, he is based in Thailand.[8][11] According to The Times, Harborne's name "features in the Panama Papers as an intermediary of companies linked to offshore accounts".[12]
Political donations
Harborne donated more than £6m to the Brexit Party in 2019,[8] £3 million in the summer[10] and £3 million before the United Kingdom general election in 2019,[8] making him the largest donor that year.[11]
Before switching his donations to the Brexit Party,[13] Harborne had donated smaller sums, averaging £15,000 per annum since 2001 totalling about £270,000, to the Conservative Party. In November 2022, Harborne donated £1 million to The Office of Boris Johnson Ltd, one of the biggest donations ever made to an individual British politician.[14] The government awarded Qinetiq, a company in which Harborne was the largest single shareholder, an £80 million Ministry of Defence contract in January 2023.[15] He acted as an advisor to Boris Johnson on his trip to Kyiv in September 2023 to meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy.[16]
In 2024 he gifted £5 million to Nigel Farage, shortly before Farage announced that he had decided to stand as a candidate in that year's general election.[17] Farage did not declare this gift at the time. This gift was disputed in May 2026 as to whether it constituted a donation that should be registered.[18][19] Farage did not disclose the donation and in May 2026 the Electoral Commission and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards began investigations.[20]
Harborne donated £9 million to Reform UK (the new name for the Brexit Party) in 2025, and a further £3 million in March 2026, making him the largest single donator to a UK political party in a financial year in UK history.[21][22][23] As of April 2026[update] his donations to Reform UK amount to more than £22 million in total, roughly two-thirds of all the party's donations since its foundation.[24]
Dispute with The Wall Street Journal
In March 2023, The Wall Street Journal published an article about banking arrangements for the cryptocurrency companies Tether and Bitfinex which linked Harborne and his aviation fuel company AML Global Ltd to those arrangements. The article alleged that AML Global had helped the companies gain access to the U.S. banking system by concealing their identities and suggested that Harborne had misrepresented his ownership of a minority stake in Bitfinex and Tether under his Thai name 'Chakrit Sakunkrit' when opening a bank account at Signature Bank.[25]
In February 2024, Harborne filed a defamation suit against Dow Jones & Company, the Journal's publisher, in the Superior Court of Delaware. He alleged the article falsely accused him of fraud, money laundering and terrorism financing and of operating a shell company for illicit purposes and that AML Global never handled funds for Tether or Bitfinex.[26]