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". 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. He is a billionaire. According to
The Times, Harborne's name "features in the
Panama Papers as an intermediary of companies linked to offshore accounts".
Political donations Harborne donated more than £6m to the
Brexit Party in 2019, 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. The government awarded
Qinetiq, a company in which Harborne was the largest single shareholder, an £80 million
Ministry of Defence contract in January 2023. He acted as an advisor to Boris Johnson on his trip to
Kyiv in September 2023 to meet
Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In 2024 he donated £5 million to
Nigel Farage, shortly before Farage announced that he had changed his mind and decided to stand as a candidate in
that year's general election. Harborne donated £9 million to
Reform UK 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. 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. Harborne also donated £5 million to Reform UK leader
Nigel Farage in early 2024. Farage did not declare this donation at the time. Farage's failure to disclose the donation is being investigated by the
Electoral Commission and has been referred to the parliamentary commissioner for standards.
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. 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. == References ==