‘Man of the people’ Nigel Farage has managed to amass a property empire worth £3 million since the 2016 Brexit referendum, The Mirror has revealed.
The Reform UK leader was shown to be the highest-earning MP after submitting his register of interests to the standards commissioner.
He receives almost £98,000 a month to be a presenter on GB News, as well as £4,000 a month writing articles for the Daily Telegraph and thousands for posting videos on Cameo.
Investigations by The Mirror show that he has managed to build a multi-million-pound property empire thanks to the pick-up in earnings – details that were curiously omitted in his standards submission.
As well as his £1 million family home, which he kept in the split from his second wife, Farage, 60, has bought two beachside homes on the Kent coast in recent years.
His fourth house is another investment property he rents out in Surrey.
The investigation – carried out with the Good Law Project – raises questions about the interests he registered with the parliamentary authorities last month.
His beachfront properties are owned by his company Thorn In The Side Limited, which is worth £1.3 million, but he has not declared himself the sole shareholder.
Nor has he registered any income from “tax-free” gold bullion investment firm Direct Bullion, which describes Farage as their “Brand Ambassador”.
He is also a founder of the “Freedom & Fortune” financial newsletter, which he says will “help you take back control of your money” and “potentially profit from a Britain primed to boom post Brexit”.
Farage insisted he had “declared all my income from July 4. That is what I was asked to do. My lawyer did the submissions”.
He told The Mirror: “I can’t work as I do without a big team of people. I employ between five and seven staff. Well I say staff, they are not staff, they are contractors, people who help me do various things. I run a company, I employ staff, I have offices, I have expenses, I have investments.
“That’s what I have built up over the course of the last eight years.” He suggested that his register of interests did not reflect his true profits: “It’s just a nonsense. I’m being asked to publish gross income, including VAT, without offsetting pretty substantial costs.”
Related: More than half of UK musicians no longer tour the EU