Vote Leave faces fresh scrutiny over donations
2 min read
The main campaign to leave the EU is facing fresh allegations that it broke spending rules in the run up to 2016’s referendum, it has emerged.
The controversial donation involves a 23-year-old fashion design student who ran an independent campaign to persuade voters to leave the bloc, called BeLeave.
Darren Grimes spent £625,000 on a Canadian social media company called Aggregate IQ during the campaign.
He was given the large sum of money by the Vote Leave campaign, according to the Times.
The cash never entered Mr Grimes’ bank account and instead went straight to Aggregate IQ.
Electoral law prohibits Mr Grimes from cooperating in any way with Vote Leave over how the donation was spent.
While it is not illegal for the Vote Leave donation which was given to Mr Grimes to go straight to Aggregate IQ, Mr Grimes does need to prove he spent the money without the campaign’s influence.
Vote Leave would not have been able to pay Aggregate IQ as they were already teetering close to the £7 million campaign spending limit at the time the donation was made.
The Electoral Commission is already investigating donations by Mr Grimes. The watchdog said in November it had “reasonable grounds to suspect an offence may have been committed”.
Vote Leave also used the Canadian company and the campaign director Dominic Cummings said after the Brexit vote: “We couldn’t have done it without them.”
A spokesman for Vote Leave said: “Payments were made directly to Aggregate IQ because this complied with the advice that Vote Leave had received in writing from the Electoral Commission. It was also done at the explicit request of BeLeave.”
Chris Bryant, the Labour MP and Remain supporter, said: “This saga gets murkier and murkier and the explanations less and less plausible.”
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