Zac Goldsmith investigated for breaking donation rules

Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative candidate for Richmond Park, is facing questions from the Electoral Commission for apparently making donations whilst not being on the electoral register.

This would be against the law and the Electoral Commission has taken a hard line in other cases where donations have been made by someone not on the register, most notably in the case of UKIP and the £363,697 it received from Alan Brown.

Saturday’s Financial Times* gave more details:

Conservative officials admit that Mr Goldsmith, 33, was not on the electoral roll when he gave £7,000 to his local party, a breach of the rules that would normally lead to the money being forfeited…

The Electoral Commission on Friday confirmed it was in correspondence with the Conservative party on the issue and that donations to political parties were “not permissible” if a donor was not on the electoral roll.

Other than this story’s own interest, it’s worth highlighting as a reminder to Liberal Democrat local parties about the need to carefully check the electoral register for their own donors.

Just because you think someone is registered, it doesn’t mean that they are. (Different rules of course apply to donations from other sources, such as trusts, companies or trade unions.)

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