A five-minute walk from the Houses of Parliament, overlooking Westminster Abbey, is one of London’s most unusual addresses. The neo-Gothic building and the political base on its second floor share a name: The Sanctuary.
A joint investigation by HOPE not hate and The Guardian reveals that The Sanctuary was set up by Ben Delo, a British crypto billionaire who has described political correctness as “an existential threat to western civilisation”. Delo, 42, was convicted in the US for wilfully failing to implement money-laundering controls at the company he co-founded. He was pardoned last year by Donald Trump and now aims to establish himself as a philanthropist in the UK.
Furnished like a Pall Mall gentlemen’s club, The Sanctuary has Chesterfield sofas, a taxidermied penguin, and a sketch of the Victorian colonialist Cecil Rhodes. Its bookshelves are decorated with Moët & Chandon champagne, a Fabergé egg, and maps of St Helena, the island on which Napoleon was exiled.
The Sanctuary offers financial support, free meeting rooms, podcast spaces and catered events to hardline activists. It is like a start-up accelerator for political initiatives, some of which are far right, like Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain and the race science magazine Aporia.
The Sanctuary takes great care to limit its public profile. The list of offices in the building’s downstairs lobby has no mention of its second-floor occupant. Organisations that use The Sanctuary are told not to refer to it online. Despite the number of high-profile guests who regularly come to the building, it has not received any media coverage until now.
This report is based on documents that HOPE not hate has seen, anonymous interviews with people who have attended Sanctuary events and social media analysis.
We can reveal:
- The Sanctuary is funded by Ben Delo, a crypto billionaire convicted of breaking an American banking law and pardoned by Donald Trump
- He funds an office with meeting rooms, podcast studios and free catering in the heart of Westminster
- Rupert Lowe MP has used The Sanctuary to advocate for mass deportations and launch Restore Britain, now a far-right political party
- Mainstream figures including Boris Johnson and Kemi Badenoch have also gone to The Sanctuary
- Delo funds 50 projects. One of his beneficiaries described what he’s doing as a 'quiet revolution' in British politics
- James Orr, a Cambridge academic who has ties to Viktor Orbán-funded groups and advises Nigel Farage, has received funding from Delo
'The Ecosystem'
One of the key beneficiaries of The Sanctuary is the MP Rupert Lowe. He currently sits as an independent after being ousted from Reform UK in a fallout with its leader, Nigel Farage. Lowe used The Sanctuary to announce his new pressure group, Restore Britain, last year. Lowe has since relaunched the group as a political party.
We can reveal that much of Restore Britain’s social media content is produced directly inside The Sanctuary. In November 2025, Lowe used the offices to promote a policy paper on implementing mass deportations. Inspired by the USA’s “Operation Wetback” of the 1950s, Lowe’s paper called for “forced removals and subtler tactics for making residence in Britain unliveable for those with no right to be here”. Lowe has been holding his “rape gang inquiry” at The Sanctuary.
Restore Britain’s website demands immigrants be detained in “deliberately austere” camps. Lowe has elsewhere called for a ban on kosher and halal meat, which would make life for many British Jews and Muslims impossible.
Restore Britain is just one node in a much larger group of users that includes race scientists and anti-abortion agitators. The guest book signed by visitors reveals a mix of figures mainstream and extreme, powerful and obscure. The names of former prime minister Boris Johnson and Tory party leader Kemi Badenoch are in there, having filmed episodes of Triggernometry, an anti-woke podcast, in The Sanctuary. The podcast, which has 1.7 million subscribers, uses Delo’s facilities free of charge. The GB News presenter Andrew Doyle and the Peep Show actress Sophie Winkleman have also signed the book, as have the far-right activists Charlie Downes and Connor Tomlinson.
In December 2023, Delo attended a lecture at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford. On stage was Peter Thiel, the Palantir founder, speaking about his book, The Diversity Myth. Delo, who had funded the lecture series, sat in the front row. Four places to his left was James Orr,
James OrrCambridge academic, now head of policy at Reform UK.
Photo by Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) the Cambridge academic who has ties to Viktor Orbán-funded groups, advises Nigel Farage, and receives money from Delo. Orr did not respond to a request for comment.
James OrrCambridge academic, now head of policy at Reform UK. Photo by Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Delo supports more than 50 projects, either through direct funding or help in kind, such as use of The Sanctuary’s podcast recording facilities. The total amount that he spends on funding projects is unknown, however the cost of renting offices alone is estimated to be £250,000 per year. Some of his beneficiaries are apolitical and include educational charities. Others are much more explicitly focused on pushing for political outcomes.
Among these recipients of Delo’s funding are the Common Good Foundation, a charity run by the reactionary Labour peer Lord Glasman, and Civic Future, a Westminster talent incubator. Civic Future, which has been informally advised by the race science advocate Andrew Sabisky,Andrew Sabisky Read more about his Westminster activities and involvement with Civic Future
runs a fellowship programme for “the next generation of MPs, advisers, civil servants” at The Sanctuary. Its students go there for weekly classes, one of which has been taught by James Orr.
Insofar as Delo has an agenda, he is deeply opposed to political correctness. He described it, in a speech at the 2024 Battle of Ideas conference, as “an existential threat to western civilisation” and “a totalising ideology that’s actually strangling our societies”. He added: “And quite frankly, I’ve had enough of it. To borrow a line from Winston Churchill, ‘this is something up with which I will not put’.”
However, some Sanctuary projects appear to have contradictory missions, and seemingly disagree. Orr, for instance, has spoken against abortion in all cases, even rape. He has also opposed same-sex marriage. Meanwhile Sex Matters, an anti-trans group, has called same-sex marriage a “fundamental” human right. Both Orr and Sex Matters have benefitted from Delo’s generosity. A representative of Sex Matters said the organisation would not comment.
A member of Danny Kruger’s team has used The Sanctuary. Kruger is an MP who defected to Reform last year, joining the party that Rupert Lowe — who also uses The Sanctuary — has bitterly opposed since his expulsion.
The eclectic range of projects supported by Delo has, according to sources, been referred to as “The Ecosystem”. This is a term for the disparate group of organisations who might share a broad opposition to liberal orthodoxies even while contradicting each other on specific issues or tactics. By scattering his donations, Delo hopes to increase his chances of influencing wider society.
When HOPE not hate approached Delo for comment, his website was updated to include more information about his background. He also announced a donation of £45 million to a maths institute and a charity for autistic children.
Delo’s lawyers subsequently told us that he provided a space and financial support for actors of a range of views, including those from the left, and this does not mean he endorses the opinions of each.
‘A quiet revolution’
Whilst there is no suggestion of improper behaviour, The Sanctuary and Delo’s funding have lacked the kind of scrutiny to which more mainstream political organisations are subjected.
The Sanctuary is not a legal entity registered in the UK, nor is The Ben Delo Foundation, which is the brand used in some of his less controversial philanthropic work. Delo claims he is based in Hong Kong.
But Delo has been building up the infrastructure for what one of his beneficiaries described as a “quiet revolution”. He is assisted by his longstanding friend Jeremy Hildreth.
Jeremy HildrethJeremy Hildreth, an old Oxford friend of Ben Delo's, now working as a brand consultant
Jeremy HildrethJeremy Hildreth, an old Oxford friend of Ben Delo's, now working as a brand consultantOutside of the door of the Westminster building that houses The Sanctuary, there is no signage referencing Ben Delo but a bronze plaque bearing the name of Hildreth. He is an American brand consultant who went to Oxford with Delo, and his company is registered at the second floor office of The Sanctuary. Hildreth is Delo’s chief of staff, according to a document seen by HOPE not hate, and we understand that he leads The Sanctuary’s day-to-day operations staff.
When asked about Hildreth’s involvement, Delo’s lawyers told HOPE not hate that he had provided “family office services” to him for some time.
Delo has connections to the Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch. In November 2023, Badenoch, then business secretary, sat at Delo’s table at a Spectator magazine awards dinner. She later sent him a card to say: “Was great to party with you last month. We should do so more often!”
Badenoch’s declarations of interest for 2021 show she received help in kind from Hildreth to a value of £26,755.20. The gift was for legal costs relating to an online harassment case. Badenoch said the donation of services in kind was properly recorded.
Delo has spoken publicly about funding Lord Toby Young’s Free Speech Union and the Committee for Academic Freedom. Young became a peer last year after being nominated by Badenoch and has frequently visited The Sanctuary.
Matthew Glamorre, a performance artist associated with the ethnonationalist Homeland Party, has also been supported by Delo, according to sources. Glamorre is a member of the Basketweavers, a far-right community group that HOPE not hate infiltrated.
What goes on in The Sanctuary
In July 2024, a race science outlet called AporiaRace Science Inc. Read more about Aporia and the race science network in our report
advertised an event at an undisclosed “Central London” location. Later exposed in a HOPE not hate investigation, Aporia by that point was infamous for its extreme articles on race and IQ, plus interviews with white nationalists like Jared Taylor, who claimed on its show that “there is no possibility of blacks and whites living peacefully together”. The event was a debate between academics associated with the group. Nathan Cofnas, a self-described “race realist”, would argue with Eric Kaufmann, an anti-woke author.
“You will be given the venue location on the morning of the event,” said the promo page. The venue ultimately provided to ticket holders was in a room adorned with a reproduction of a 16th-century tapestry at The Sanctuary. There, Kaufmann touched on topics like “the problems with… black culture” and the need to “become more comfortable with a natural level of inequality”.
Aporia is one of several different far-right or fringe groups that have used The Sanctuary’s free services. The Battle of Ideas, a free speech festival described as promoting “anti-science, anti-expert, and anti-public health positions”, has the use of its own room at The Sanctuary. Run by Baroness Claire Fox, it has also received £100,000 a year from Delo. We understand that there are several full-time staff to manage room bookings, which come with services like free catering.
Delo has also used The Sanctuary as a hangout space. According to a rare interview, he shared sandwiches and whisky with Jordan Peterson and his wife while watching the late queen’s funeral through the windows. Delo supports ARC, a right-wing conference headed by Peterson. Speaking at an ARC event in 2023, Konstantin Kisin, who presents the anti-woke Triggernometry podcast, thanked Ben Delo for using his fortune “for the betterment of humanity”.
The office has multiple rooms and podcast studio equipment, making it an important place for the production of right-wing social media content. Triggernometry is regularly recorded at The Sanctuary. So is Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s podcast for her outlet Courage Media. Connor Tomlinson has also filmed his YouTube videos in the space and, as previously mentioned, so has Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain.
Who is Ben Delo?
One of Britain’s youngest self-made billionaires, Delo co-founded the trillion-dollar cryptocurrency exchange platform BitMEX in 2014. He developed a reputation for philanthropic largesse in 2018, when he gave £5 million to Worcester College, Oxford, where he studied maths and computer science, and £7.5 million to a charity for autism, which he has been open about having. He signed The Giving Pledge in 2019, a scheme for the very wealthy to promise to donate the majority of their money. Delo says he has poured more than £100 million into philanthropy.
Delo soon garnered a more unwelcome reputation. In 2022, he was convicted of breaking an American banking law. It emerged that at BitMEX, Delo failed to implement and maintain an adequate anti-money laundering programme in the US. A prosecutor said the company was “in effect a money laundering platform” while Delo has rejected that accusation and claimed he had no obligation to comply with US legislation.
Delo told regulators that in accordance with local laws, US customers were prohibited from using his platform. However, according to prosecutors, this was untrue: thousands of Americans were trading on BitMEX, which had hired US influencers to attract them. In 2018, Delo posed with his two co-founders outside a New York crypto conference next to three Lamborghinis.
According to court documents, Delo admitted that the company falsely altered the addresses on the client records of American users so that they appeared to come from outside the country. He also, allegedly, communicated directly with users of BitMEX in Iran, despite it being sanctioned by the US.
After pleading guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act in February 2022, Delo was sentenced to 30 months of probation and agreed to pay a $10 million fine. The prosecutor in his case was excoriating, especially about Delo’s philanthropy. “The fact that the defendant was able to give several million dollars to charity no doubt resulted in large part from the fact that he personally received… dividends from BitMEX while the company systematically flouted [American banking legislation] for a period of five years.” In a later interview, Delo insisted he ran his business “very straight”, saying his conviction was a “non crime” and a “spurious blip”. His conviction is now considered spent.
Delo’s lawyers told HOPE not hate that the government had sought to overstate the seriousness of the offence. They said that the prosecutor’s statements were without foundation, were deliberately partisan and did not form part of the court’s findings.
In March 2025, Delo and his two co-founders were pardoned by Donald Trump. The events that led to his pardon are unknown. He told a newspaper last year that he is “very grateful” to the president. A framed copy of the pardon hangs in the hallway of The Sanctuary.
‘Free speech this way’
Since he was pardoned, Delo has taken a step into the limelight and built connections with a wide range of political groups. Some of the organisations supported by Delo or using The Sanctuary are influential. Sex Matters, an anti-trans group which hosted their Christmas party in The Sanctuary, is quoted by the BBC on trans issues. Munira Mirza, chief executive of Civic Future, was head of Boris Johnson’s policy unit and was last year reportedly “discussing multiculturalism” with Morgan McSweeney, then the prime minister’s chief of staff.
Delo’s growing network in the UK was on full display in June 2025 when he hosted a summer party for many of his influential friends and allies in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. Guests drank Laurent-Perrier rosé champagne and listened to a string quartet. The cloisters were illuminated in red, white and blue lighting. Signs reading “free speech this way” guided guests to an afterparty held in The Sanctuary, catered by Fatto a Mano pizza.
Photos taken at the event show the breadth of Delo’s connections. Present was Advance UK’s Ben Habib, who has called for Channel migrants to “drown”, as was the Lotus Eaters host Leo Kearse, who said that white people benefitted from a “genetic trend towards increased intelligence”. Also there was Paul Coleman of Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-abortion pressure group from the US that believes in “honouring God’s design for marriage”. Matthew Goodwin, an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate for Reform UK, came too.
Delo’s party hosted the American journalist Michael Shellenberger, known for his climate change denial and authorship of “The Twitter Files”, a release of internal documents shared by the platform’s new owner Elon Musk starting in 2022.
In addition to these fringe guests at the event, however, were mainstream political figures like Lord Glasman, the broadcaster Sir Trevor Phillips and the former Tory minister Michael Gove.
Delo and his guests partied until the early hours. At one point, Delo asked a friend to lift him “like Superman” so he could hang on one of the Sanctuary’s ceiling lights. It came crashing down to applause.
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