Charlie Young

Billionaire Christopher Harborne donated millions to Farage and Johnson. Then the pro-crypto announcements began. Is there a connection?

The crypto investor’s £5m gift to Reform’s leader coincided with the party’s new-found advocacy for digital assets – part of a pattern of significant political donations that also included £1m to the former Tory prime minister. Report by Charlie Young and Lucia Osborne-Crowley

The Harborne Receipts

The Palantir pipeline: how Peter Thiel's surveillance firm hired more than 30 senior UK officials

The AI company holds £670m in UK government contracts. It has also hired dozens of senior officials from the departments awarding them – raising what transparency experts call an 'acute' corruption risk, write Charlie Young, Carole Cadwalladr and Ian Tucker

Palantir

‘It beggars belief’: MoD sources warn Palantir’s role at heart of government is threat to UK’s security

Experts say that claims UK data remains under government ownership miss the point that the company has the capability to build its own detailed picture of the British population, and even infer state secrets. Report by Charlie Young and Carole Cadwalladr

News

Revealed: 80% of Reform’s funding comes from Tory donors

The majority of the money behind Nigel Farage’s movement was being supplied by Conservative interests even before the defection of so many high-profile figures from the party – to the alarm of former Reform faithfuls, writes Charlie Young

Investigations