Reform – currently facing questions over an undisclosed personal donation of £5 million to Nigel Farage from billionaire crypto backer Christopher Harborne – look like they’ve found another wealthy backer.
Three of the party’s top team had a lovely night out at the boxing earlier this month, paid for by Avrom Lasarow. The entrepreneur forked out £3,500 for Nigel Farage, Suella Braverman and Lee Anderson to attend the heavyweight fight between Derek Chisora, a Reform supporter, and the American Deontay Wilder at London’s Millennium Dome – sorry, O2. The three all enjoyed the fisticuffs from VIP boxes.
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Lasarow coughed up £416 each for Farage – who promoted the event by turning up to a press conference in a tank with Chisora – and his son and daughter-in-law to attend, as well as spending £167 each on refreshments. Braverman took her husband, Rael, an on-off-on-again Reform member, at a total cost of £1,166, while Anderson, who split from his wife last year, went solo at a cost of £583. The tickets have all been declared with the House of Commons’ register of members’ interests.
Lasarow bills himself online as an “investor, innovator, entrepreneur and campaigner”, but he has made his fortune in the field of genetics and specifically the development of hair alcohol testing. In 2013 he founded DNAFit, a company that sells DNA testing kits developed for nutritional and fitness purposes. In 2018, he sold it to Hong Kong company Prenetics for a reported $10 million, with Lasarow being appointed its CEO.
Whether Reform is a fan of hair alcohol testing is unclear: this week Farage hit out at new Green MP Hannah Spencer after she criticised the boozing culture in Parliament, accusing her of thinking “an afternoon pint is a step too far”.
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Curiously, though, Lasarow appears yet to have donated any money to the party itself. He has four current and nine former directorships listed with Companies House, although only one, financial management firm V1AM, has so far filed accounts.
Meanwhile, the Reform leader himself has added yet more outside earnings to his bulging register of interests, declaring a further £40,662 for his presenting gigs with propaganda outlet GB News and an estimated £16,400 from The Club for Growth, a deep-pocketed pro-Trump organisation, for a speaking engagement in Washington.
Perhaps Reform aren’t desperate for Lasarow’s cash – Farage’s latest outside earnings alone are 10 times more than Lasarow held in V1AM, the only one of the South African’s current businesses to have filed accounts.
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