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| Brexit: Leave.EU campaign fined £70,000 for breaking election law during referendum | Brexit: Leave.EU campaign fined £70,000 for breaking election law during referendum |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| The UK’s voting watchdog has fined a key organisation that pushed for Brexit some £70,000 for breaches of electoral rules committed during the 2016 referendum and referred one of its senior figures to police. | |
| The Electoral Commission found that Leave.EU – the group backed by Nigel Farage and funded by Arron Banks – failed to include at least £77,380 in its spending return following the national vote. | The Electoral Commission found that Leave.EU – the group backed by Nigel Farage and funded by Arron Banks – failed to include at least £77,380 in its spending return following the national vote. |
| It means that the organisation exceeding the legal spending limits ahead of the referendum, which saw the country back leaving the European Union. | It means that the organisation exceeding the legal spending limits ahead of the referendum, which saw the country back leaving the European Union. |
| The watchdog also referred a key figure in Leave.EU’s hierarchy, Liz Bilney, to the Metropolitan Police due to “reasonable grounds to suspect” that criminal offences have occurred. | |
| The Electoral Commission’s director of political finance, Bob Posner, said: “The rules we enforce were put in place by Parliament to ensure transparency and public confidence in our democratic processes. | The Electoral Commission’s director of political finance, Bob Posner, said: “The rules we enforce were put in place by Parliament to ensure transparency and public confidence in our democratic processes. |
| “It is therefore disappointing that Leave.EU, a key player in the EU referendum, was unable to abide by these rules. | “It is therefore disappointing that Leave.EU, a key player in the EU referendum, was unable to abide by these rules. |
| “Leave.EU exceeded its spending limit and failed to declare its funding and its spending correctly. These are serious offences. The level of fine we have imposed has been constrained by the cap on the Commission’s fines.” | “Leave.EU exceeded its spending limit and failed to declare its funding and its spending correctly. These are serious offences. The level of fine we have imposed has been constrained by the cap on the Commission’s fines.” |
| The watchdog found the group had exceeded the spending limit for non-party registered campaigners by at least 10 per cent and said that the unlawful over-spend “may well have been considerably higher”. | |
| The commission’s investigation focussed on services Leave.EU received from the US campaign strategy firm Goddard Gunster, which were not included in its spending return, despite a proportion of them having been used during the group’s referendum campaign. | |
| The investigation also found that Leave.EU did not correctly report the receipt of three loans from Mr Banks, totalling £6m, with dates around the transaction and the related interest rate incorrectly reported. | |
| Finally, Leave.EU also failed to provide the required invoice or receipt for 97 payments of over £200, totalling £80,224. | |
| The Commission also looked at whether Leave.EU had received services from Cambridge Analytica – the firm at the centre of a recent data harvesting scandal – but found no evidence. | |
| Through its investigation, the watchdog said it had also uncovered "reasonable grounds to suspect" that Ms Bilney committed criminal offences and that she had been referred to the Met as a result. | |
| Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Banks called the Commission's findings a "joke", and vowed to fight them in the courts. | |
| More follows… | More follows… |