Lead Brexit group faces police inquiry over electoral spending

LONDON: Britain’s officially designated Brexit campaign group, Vote Leave, was fined £61,000 (RM327,000) yesterday for breaching spending rules in the 2016 referendum and referred to the police by the Electoral Commission.

The move by the commission, which said serious breaches of the law had been committed by Vote Leave, added to calls from opponents of Brexit for a re-run of the referendum on the European Union membership, though Prime Minister Theresa May had repeatedly ruled out another vote.

The commission said Vote Leave, which was fronted by leading Brexiteers such as former foreign scretary Boris Johnson and environment minister Michael Gove, used an allied group to pay Aggregate IQ, a company that used social media data to target voters, and thus exceeded spending.

“We found evidence that the two groups worked to a common plan, did not declare their joint working and did not adhere to the legal spending limits,” said Bob Posner, the commission’s director of political finance and regulation.

Brexit campaigners said they were fighting an attempt by the British establishment to thwart the process of leaving the EU and had dismissed as nonsense claims by opponents that they cheated, lied and even colluded with Russia to win.

Vote Leave said the Electoral Commision had made false accusations, failed to interview anybody from the group and had not followed due process.

“All this suggests that the supposedly impartial commission is motivated by a political agenda rather than uncovering the facts,” said a Vote Leave spokesman.

The commission, he said, had “based its conclusions on unfounded claims and conspiracy theories”.

Overall, Vote Leave was found to have exceeded the statutory spending limit of £7 million by £449,079 by working with BeLeave, which spent £675,000 with Aggregate IQ under a common plan with Vote Leave.

The commission said Vote Leave should have declared its joint spending, adding that its spending return was inaccurate in respect of 43 items of spending totalling £236,501.

David Halsall, the responsible person for Vote Leave, and Darren Grimes, the founder of the BeLeave campaign group, were referred to the police for false declarations of campaign spending.

Vote Leave resisted the investigation from the start and had refused to cooperate, the commission said.

“Nevertheless, the evidence we have found is clear and substantial,” Posner said.

“These are serious breaches of the laws put in place by Parliament to ensure fairness and transparency at elections and referendums.”

In the 2016 referendum, 17.4 million people, or 51.9 per cent of votes cast, supported leaving the EU, while 16.1 million people, or 48.1 per cent of the votes, supported staying in the EU.