Reform UK calls for probe into $50K SBF-linked donation to UK Defence Secretary

The tangled financial legacy of Sam Bankman-Fried just surfaced in an unlikely place: the office of Britain’s Defence Secretary. Reform UK chair Lee Anderson has formally requested an investigation into donations totaling £37,500 (roughly $50,500) received by UK Defence Secretary Wes Streeting from Labour for the Long Term (LLT), a now-defunct think tank with ties to the Labour Party. The call follows a Telegraph investigation that drew a financial line between those donations and a £500,000 contribution from SBF to LLT founder David Lawrence in July 2022. The money trail The timeline is what makes this politically uncomfortable. Lawrence received £500,000 from Bankman-Fried in July 2022. The following month, August 2022, LLT made its largest donation to Streeting: £30,000. A second payment of £7,500 followed in August 2023. The money was earmarked to fund a part-time policy adviser for Streeting. Streeting has maintained that every donation was properly declared and that he had no knowledge of where LLT’s money originally came from. Lawrence has echoed that defense, arguing that the funds supporting Streeting came from an entirely separate pool of money, unrelated to the SBF contr...