LEAVE CAMPAIGN GROUP ‘BROKE RULES’

THE official Brexit campaign group broke election rules and acted illegally during the referendum campaign, an investigation has found.

The Vote Leave campaign faces the prospect of being heavily fined by elections watchdog the Electoral Commission.

The commission found Vote Leave broke campaign spending rules and breached regulations by sending more than £600,000 to a separate campaign.

Former Vote Leave chief executive Matthew Elliott said of the watchdog’s report: “Their initial conclusion is that we have overspent, that a donation we made to another group during the course of the campaign was incorrect, that we shouldn’t have made that donation.”

Elliott denied wrongdoing, saying the watchdog hadn’t followed “due process”. He vowed to challenge their findings in court.

A leaked draft of the report shows the commission will accuse Vote Leave of four charges of breaking electoral law. The report follows claims from whistleblowers who said the group made a £625,000 donation to pro-Brexit youth campaign BeLeave in order to skirt campaign spending limits.

The money went via BeLeave to data analytics firm AggregateIQ, a data harvesting firm who used social media to predict voting intentions.

BeLeave also denied any wrongdoing.