Nigerian-born tycoon Bassim Haidar puts his £18 million One Hyde Park flat up for sale

Bassim Haidar is selling an £18.2 million flat at One Hyde Park in Knightsbridge, along with homes in Mayfair, Kensington and Chelsea, as he cuts back his London property holdings amid fears over Labour's tax rises, the Sunday Telegraph reported on Sept. 20.

The Nigerian-born telecoms businessman is also one of Reform UK's largest donors. He gave the party £192,000 between April and June, making him its second-biggest donor that quarter, and his disclosed contributions now exceed £547,000.

He defected from the Conservatives last year and pledged £1 million to Nigel Farage's party. He had given the Tories more than £700,000 while Rishi Sunak was prime minister, and said he left because they had promised to abolish non-dom status, the arrangement that let foreign-domiciled residents avoid British tax on income earned abroad.

Labour went on to abolish it, and raised taxes on investments, inheritance and capital gains. Those are the changes the Telegraph says are driving Haidar and other wealthy residents to sell up.

Leaving would stop his donations. British law bans political donations from abroad, and an individual can give to a party only while registered to vote in the UK. Haidar, whose nationality is listed as Irish at Companies House, remains on the register. He told Byline Times this month that his donations were entirely legal, that he is still a UK resident, and that he plans to leave "sometime in the future, not determined yet."

Once he comes off the register, he can no longer give to Reform or any other British party.

Earlier reporting put his London portfolio at about £80 million and said he intended to move to Greece and Dubai.

The properties he is keeping will cost more to hold. From April 2028, homes in England worth more than £2 million will pay an annual surcharge of between £2,500 and £7,500 on top of council tax.

He is part of a wider departure. Jim Ratcliffe has been a tax resident of Monaco since 2020, the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal left for Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates last year, and the hedge fund manager Chris Rokos, one of Britain's largest taxpayers, is moving to Greece.

Reform campaigns against what it calls globalism and has promised tax breaks for wealthy overseas residents. Haidar has advised the World Economic Forum and Amnesty International, two institutions Farage has attacked repeatedly.

He made his money in African telecoms. Born in Nigeria to Lebanese parents, he founded Channel VAS in 2012, the business now called Optasia, which lends airtime and small sums of cash to mobile phone users without bank accounts across 38 countries. He reduced his stake in it from 19.3% to 1.5% within months of the company's listing.