Electoral Commission launches investigation into #Leave.EU referendum funding

Today (21 April 2017) the UK’s Electoral Commission has decided to start an investigation into Leave.EU’s referendum spending. Leave.EU was one of the organizations that supported the ‘leave’ vote in the run-up to last year’s referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU.

The Electoral Commission is the independent body which oversees elections and regulates political finance in the UK. Having carried out an initial assessment of Leave.EU’s spending on the referendum, it believes there are reasonable grounds to suspect that potential offences may have occurred.

In a statement the Electoral Commission spokesperson said: “The investigation is focused on whether one or more donations – including of services – accepted by Leave.EU was impermissible and whether Leave.EU’s spending return was complete.

“The time taken to complete an investigation varies on a case-by-case basis. Once the investigation is complete, the Commission will decide whether any breaches have occurred and, if so, what further action may be appropriate, in line with its Enforcement Policy."

In a response to the statement, the chairman of Leave.EU Arron Banks accused the independent Commission of making a “politically motivated” announcement designed to cause damage before the upcoming UK General Election. Leave.EU announced that they would not cooperate any further with the Commission.

In the response, Banks says that the Electoral Commission ignored his complaint that the government published a free ‘Remain’ leaflet that cost £11 million, adding that the government had failed to translate the leaflet into Welsh.

He also complained that the designated ‘Vote Leave’ campaign gave £650,000 to a student and hadn’t been investigated.

While the Electoral Commission’s statement doesn’t name the ‘services’ accepted by Leave.EU, it is thought that it might refer to a company called Cambridge Analytica, partly owned by US billionaire Robert Mercer who was also a supporter of the Trump campaign.

Stephen Kinnock MP wrote to the Electoral Commission in March to complain that Leave.EU cold have been involved in a possible violation of financing rules as the “market rate for a donation of this kind [for services] could amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds”. Leave.EU did not declare the donation-in-kind in their returns to the Electoral Commission.

Kinnock wrote: “Any substantial additional spending between 15 April last year and the referendum on 23 June would have pushed Leave.EU over the spending limit for the regulated period. They were allowed by law to spend up to £700,000 but according to the accounts they filed they spent £693,000.”

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