Leave.EU Chief Executive referred to police over Euro referendum campaigning
The Times has the latest news in the Electoral Commission’s investigation into whether or not Leave.EU broke election spending rules around the European referendum:
The elections watchdog has referred the chief executive of Leave.EU to police on suspicion of breaking electoral law, The Times can reveal.
The Electoral Commission concluded last month that there were reasonable grounds to suspect Liz Bilney had delivered an incomplete and incorrect spending return for the Brexit campaign group after the referendum.
The Electoral Commission has also levied a series of fines adding up to £70,000:
In a letter to Ms Bilney in April, the watchdog gave notice that it found the campaign guilty of four breaches, which in turn meant the spending return she submitted had been inaccurate and incomplete.
One breach was exceeding the spending cap for non-party registered campaigners in the EU referendum, while the other three involved misreporting transactions or spending.
As the Commission’s press release explains:
Leave.EU failed to include at least £77,380 in its spending return, thereby exceeding the spending limit for non-party registered campaigners by at least 10%. The Commission also considers that the unlawful over-spend may well have been considerably higher than that. Services the group received from the US campaign strategy firm Goddard Gunster were not included in the spending return, despite a proportion of them having been used during Leave.EU’s referendum campaign.
The Commission found Leave.EU inaccurately reported three loans it had received. This included a lack of transparency and incorrect reporting around who provided the loans, the dates the loans were entered into, the repayment date and the interest rate. Finally, Leave.EU failed to provide the required invoice or receipt for 97 payments of over £200, totalling £80,224.
I feel that the Electoral Commission is taking a very light view of this Illegality, what effect did the Overspend have.
The big issue is that there area number of illegalities, with respect to the campaigning groups not least the £625,000 overspend by Vote-Leave to Aggregate IQ and the conspiracy which was involved to bring that about. Then there is the conspiracy to cover up the facts when the Election Commission decided to investigate.
These people are also looking at what effect this overspend had, since the “Social media” “method” was selected individuals with specifically targeted misinformation, unless these investigators can replicate those targeted individuals they will not find any misinformation or be able to assess what effect it could have had on those individuals.
This “method” is far greater than the “sub-liminal blimp” in movies and that was outlawed, this is the first stage to “mind control” of George Orwells 1984.
The whole vote is now polluted, we know that the right wing media lied through it’s teeth , the Big Red Bus with £350 million a week extra was a great big porky, the Leave campaign has broken the electoral laws and the dark money question between Banks, the Mercer family won’t go away.
I wrote to my Tory MP and said there are two options for the Tories, they can offer a second vote or when the fecal matter hits the fan and services get cut while prices go up and jobs go south they can own responsibility for this mess.
The EU referendum was and still is flawed from start and still is.
Continental EU citizens resident in UK, working & paying taxes were unfairly denied voting rights as were British resident in other parts of EU.
The leave campaign pandered to voters worse immigration/racist emotions.
Worst of all the people in power like David Cameron allowed a vote about our trading arrangements with our permanent neighbours & partners. This was & is insane. British politicians are knowingly destroying the country that they have sworn to protect.
Referenda are invariably flawed. A lecturer who was an expert on social surveys explained it to us students thus: “Sociopaths and psychopaths make up a small percentage of the population; add to this the paranoid and otherwise mentally ill, various conspiracy theorists, the aggrieved and disaffected, the marginalised waiting for a change of any kind and you have gone over 10% even in a stable and affluent democracy”. Apparently these people will note vote in ordinary elections but turn out in large numbers in referenda or elections where there is an anti-establishment candidate. Which is why we have parliamentary democracy. To protect us.