Major Brexit ‘Leave’ Group Found To Have Breached Electoral Rules

Remember Brexit? That thing that somehow happened seemingly 100 years ago and also hasn’t happened yet? The drama around Brexit has managed to stay at a fever pitch for two years now, and there doesn’t seem to be any chance of it abating any time soon, especially with revelations that one of the major ‘leave’ groups likely broke electoral rules.

The UK Electoral Commission today released the findings of an investigation into the funding of major campaign group Vote Leave, suggesting that they had funnelled money through another group to get around their spending limit.

Vote Leave, as the designated lead group of the ‘leave’ campaign, was operating within a spending limit of  £7,000,000 (roughly $12.5M AUD), but a report from the Electoral Commission says that they are satisfied “beyond reasonable doubt” that Vote Leave spent an unreported £675,315 through youth Brexit group BeLeave, which acted as something of a sockpuppet for Vote Leave.

The commission is alleging that, while being reported as an expense of BeLeave, the £675,315 was being spent by Vote Leave on a campaign with Aggregate IQ, a company that, according to Reuters, “uses social media data to target voters“. A Gizmodo article published earlier this year claimed that Aggregate IQ was responsible for developing the technology used by Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 presidential election.

In total, the commission found Vote Leave to have gone over its spending limit by  £449,079 (roughly $800,000 AUD).

Vote Leave has been fined £61,000 and Darren Grimes, founder of BeLeave, was fined £20,000. Grimes and Vote Leave official David Halsall have both been referred to the police by the commission for false declarations of campaign spending.

Vote Leave has responded to the report by calling it “wholly inaccurate” and describing the commission as being “motivated by a political agenda“.

Earlier this year, another ‘leave’ group, Leave.EU, was fined £70,000 for failing to report properly on its spending.

More Stuff From PEDESTRIAN.TV