Christopher Harborne, a shareholder in both Bitfinex and Tether’s parent company and a prominent right-wing backer, paid for Nigel Farage to visit Donald Trump following the failed assassination attempt against the former president. 

That’s according to the UK Parliament’s latest register of interest filings, which details the financial interests of its politicians. It revealed that Farage’s trip to the US on July 17 cost £32,000 (~$41,500) and was funded by Harborne. 

As reported by The Guardian, the trip was arranged for Farage “to support a friend who was almost killed and to represent Clacton on the world stage.” However, judging by the lack of photos of Trump and Farage together, it seems likely that the newly-elected member of Parliament (MP) never actually got to meet the 2024 presidential hopeful. 

Farage has also been criticized by users on X (formerly Twitter) for the little time he has spent in his constituency.

Harborne’s crypto ties and big right-wing bets

Harborne has previously donated to other ring-wing figureheads, giving £1.2 million ($1.55 million) to disgraced former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and £15 million ($18.3 million) to the UK’s Conservative Party, the Brexit Party, and Nigel Farage’s own Reform UK.

He is also a shareholder in Tether’s parent company Digfinex and his son, William Harborne, is the founder of Rhino.fi, formerly Ethfinex, which is a Tether sister firm that was spun out of Bitfinex. 

In early 2019, Harborne was issued over $70 million USDT under his alternative Thai name, Chakrit Sakunkrit. This year he sued the Wall Street Journal for defamation over its article, ‘Crypto Companies Behind Tether Used Falsified Documents and Shell Companies to Get Bank Accounts.’

Read more: Nigel Farage milkshake’d while touring with shady crypto ally

Filings also detail that George Cottrell, Farage’s aid and a convicted criminal who was caught agreeing to launder drug funds, funded Farage’s £9,250 trip to the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels in April. 

Farage was also revealed to have made almost £1.2 million a year from the right-wing broadcaster GB News, seemingly making him the highest-paid MP in the UK. 

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Christopher Harborne — who goes by the name Chakrit Sakunkrit in Thailand — is a Bitfinex shareholder, the number one supporter of Brexit, and is suing the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) for defamation.

The multimillionaire, who made his money from an aviation fuel company and a number of almost-too-brilliant crypto investments, is taking on the News Corp-owned WSJ over an article entitled ‘Crypto Companies Behind Tether Used Falsified Documents and Shell Companies to Get Bank Accounts.’

The article, which was only corrected a week ago, is nearly a year old and the lawsuit appears to be coming out of left field. The correction states:

“A previous version of this article included a section regarding Christopher Harborne and AML Global, which applied for an account at Signature Bank. The section has been removed to avoid any potential implication that AML’s attempt to open an account there was part of an effort by Tether, Bitfinex, or related companies to mislead banks, or that Harborne or AML withheld or falsified information during the application process.”

Read more: Bitfinex Securities hasn’t seen a single trade in two months

Defamation in Delaware

The original claims of the article seem to have largely revolved around Christopher Harborne, his alias Chakrit Sakunkrit, and another individual, Stephen Moore, who had reservations about Bitfinex’s banking arrangements. Apparently, the allegations made within the article were enough for Harborne to bring a suit against the WSJ a year later, post-correction.

The choice of venue for the lawsuit — Delaware — is slightly puzzling. The WSJ is headquartered in New York and it could be that Harborne is attempting to avoid the state’s well-known Anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) legislation.

This isn’t the first time Bitfinex or a Bitfinex shareholder has taken on a seemingly unbeatable opponent: in 2017 Bitfinex sued Wells Fargo in a desperate attempt to keep customer dollars flowing into and out of the exchange. The suit was dropped very shortly after.

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Tether recently announced a “strategic alliance” with rhino.fi — formerly DeversiFi, formerly Ethfinex — which Tether claims will “improve liquidity” for rhino.fi’s bridging solution. 

The genesis of rhino.fi is Ethfinex, a Tether sister firm spun out of Bitfinex with the goal of eventually creating a ‘trustless exchange.’

Eventually, the trading volume associated with this was merged back into Bitfinex and the on-chain trading of tokens became the domain of DeversiFi, which was more explicitly spun out of Bitfinex with a ‘management buyout.’ 

Despite this separation, DeversiFi and Bitfinex continued to collaborate closely, with Bitfinex and DeversiFi working together on a solution to transfer Tether tokens to DeversiFi’s layer-2 decentralized exchange. 

Since then, DeversiFi has rebranded as rhino.fi, attempting to enable transactions in different tokens across various chains, including Tether tokens, even before this new ‘alliance.’

William and Christopher Harborne

rhino.fi is led by William Harborne, the son of Christopher Harborne. Christopher is also sometimes known as Chakrit Sakunkrit and is a shareholder in Tether’s parent company Digfinex.

Read more: BoJo donor Christopher Harborne named as intermediary in Tether fraud claims

Christopher is very active politically, serving as the largest donor to Reform UK and a large donor to Boris Johnson. He reportedly helped Bitfinex and Tether maintain access to banking by applying for bank accounts at Signature Bank for his aviation fuel brokerage, AML Global, which subsequently received funds from Bitfinex.

This latest ‘strategic alliance’ follows a long history of collaboration between William Harborne, Christopher Harborne, Bitfinex, Tether, and Ethfinex/DeversiFi/rhino.fi.

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The post Tether forms ‘alliance’ with former sister firm, rhino.fi fka Ethfinex appeared first on Protos.