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Nigel Farage increased his stake in GB News while George Farmer, the former boss of US social media platform Parler, became an investor in the right-wing British TV channel.

According to company filings this week, GB News also awarded additional shares to members of its broadcast staff and management, including City fund manager Helena Morrissey and its chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos.

Additionally, documents show that Dan Wootton and Laurence Fox are both still shareholders despite having left the chain. Fox, the actor-turned-politician and leader of the Reclaim party, was removed from the channel last year after making sexist comments about a journalist. Wootton left GB News in March after regulator Ofcom deemed the episode of his show in which the two appeared had broken broadcasting rules.

The loss-making broadcaster is mainly owned and financed by Sir Paul Marshall, the British hedge fund tycoon, and Dubai-based Legatum Ventures. The two shareholders finance the chain through loans that can be taken out as needed, according to people familiar with the matter.

The UK High Court heard earlier this month that GB News faced a significant fine after failing in its legal challenge to end the ongoing sanctions process by Ofcom, although a final decision of the regulator will still be necessary in the coming weeks.

Farmer is the latest conservative media executive to join the broadcaster as a shareholder, having been named director last year. He is the son of former Conservative Party treasurer and life peer Lord Michael Farmer, who is also already a shareholder in GB News.

Farmer was running Parler in 2022 when it was announced that the platform would be acquired by Kanye West, although the app was later shut down. His wife, Candace Owens, is a well-known American conservative political commentator.

At the last round of filings last year, Farage owned almost 300,000 shares in the group through his company Thorn In The Side. This figure rises to almost 500,000, according to documents filed this week with Companies House.

That ownership as a percentage of outstanding shares has remained about the same given the increase in total shares outstanding, a person close to the company said, even though other shareholders have been diluted accordingly .

The Financial Times revealed last year that GB News had handed shares to its top presenters and contributors, including Farage and former Conservative business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Other presenters affected include Eamonn Holmes and journalist Camilla Tominey, who is also deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph.

Many of these shares were offered as incentives to staff in the form of growth shares, which tend to benefit from a defined company valuation.

GB News declined to comment. Farmer was invited to comment via GB News. Morrissey was not available for comment.

The channel has a number of current and former Conservative MPs as presenters, which has led to repeated breaches of the broadcasting code due to the lack of impartiality of some of its broadcasts.

Doubts have been cast over the future of MPs working in paid media roles, with the government signaling a crackdown could be underway. Leader of the House of Commons Lucy Powell told MPs last month that the cross-party modernization committee she launched to improve the House’s procedures, standards and working practices would review the rules on engagements paid media coverage for MPs.

A government official said further scrutiny was needed over whether MPs – often on lucrative contracts – are hired by media organisations, adding: “The question arises as to whether this is of a conflict of interest with their parliamentary functions. »

The committee is expected to focus on formal or regular media roles and is unlikely to consider banning one-off television appearances or written articles in newspapers, according to people familiar with its plans.

Farage, who declined to comment on his involvement in GB News, told the Financial Times: “I think the modernization committee is aimed directly at myself, Lee Anderson and GB News. They are clearly very afraid of us.