Christopher Harborne | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 1962 (age 62) |
| Nationality | British |
| Other names | 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 |
| Parent(s) | Edgar Sherriff Harborne (Father), Joan Margaret Harborne (Mother) [1] |
| Relatives | Richard Harborne (brother), Katharine Mary Harborne (Sister) [2] |
Christopher Charles Sherriff Harborne (born December 1962) is a British businessman and technology investor based in Thailand. A University of Cambridge and INSEAD graduate, Harborne has made donations to enable the founding of INSEAD San Francisco and the creation of a blockchain research fund. He has also donated to the UK's Conservative Party and more recently has been a major donor to UK's Reform UK, donating more than £10 million in 2019. [3]
He also holds Thai citizenship under the name Chakrit Sakunkrit. [4]
Christopher Harborne was born in December 1962. He was educated at Westminster School and is a graduate of Downing College, University of Cambridge, from where he received the degrees of MA, MEng and MBA. [5] He also received an MBA from the Institut européen d'administration des affaires (INSEAD) in 1988. [6]
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". [7] [8] 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. [9] He has made a donation to enable the founding of INSEAD San Francisco and to create a Blockchain Research Fund. [6] He has set up a company, Singular AI Consulting Limited, with crypto-currency miner Marco Streng. [7] As of December 2019, he is based in Thailand. [7] [10]
Harborne donated more than £6m to the Brexit Party in 2019, [7] £3 million in the summer [9] and £3 million before the United Kingdom general election in 2019, [7] making him the largest donor that year. [10] His sister Katharine, a scientist and artist who was previously a councillor for the Conservative Party, has been a candidate for the Brexit Party. [11] Before switching his donations to the Brexit Party, [12] Harborne had donated smaller sums, averaging £15,000 per annum since 2001, 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. [13] Consequently Boris Johnson awarded Harborne with a £80m MoD contract in January 2023. [14]
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. [15]
In February 2024 Harborne filed a defamation suit against Dow Jones & Company, the Journal's publisher, in the Superior Court of Delaware, he claims 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. [16]