BeLeave revelations taint Brexit result. There must be another vote [View all]
... The revelations over the weekend from the brave and principled former BeLeave treasurer Shahmir Sanni are devastating. His claim that £625,000 was donated by Vote Leave to his supposedly independent pro-Brexit referendum campaign organisation – and channelled to a digital services firm with links to the controversial Cambridge Analytica – if proven, flagrantly violated election rules as it was not a genuine donation.
Sanni stated, too, that BeLeave shared offices with Vote Leave – fronted by Tory MPs Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – which allegedly in practice offered advice and assistance to the group and helped it to decide where its cash would be spent. British electoral law forbids different campaign organisations acting in concert unless they have a shared cap on spending.
In what one can only assume was a state of panic, Theresa May’s press office swiftly put out a statement that among other things outed Sanni as a homosexual – a tactic that places his family at considerable personal risk due to his Pakistani heritage...
... As transparency campaigner for more than 10 years, I have long had a sense that something was not quite right about the EU referendum. I warned back in November 2017 that the leave campaign seemed to be awash with dark money that may have circumvented rules designed to uphold the integrity of our democratic process. There have already been claims that the mysterious Constitutional Research Council routed £425,000 into pro-Brexit advertisements in London via the Democratic Unionist party. In 2016 the same organisation gave the Tory MP Steve Baker £6,500. At the time Baker was chairman of a Tory hard-Brexit caucus, the European Research Group, which was behind the letter that Johnson and Gove recently sent to the prime minister ordering her not to dare to stray from the Brexit path...
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/gina-miller
... Vote Leave members 'may have committed criminal offences'. MPs to debate claims that official Brexit campaign colluded to breach spending limits
Members of the official Brexit campaign during the EU referendum may have committed criminal offences relating to overspending and collusion, according to lawyers advising whistleblowers who worked inside the organisation.
Clare Montgomery and Helen Mountfield, barristers from Matrix chambers, concluded in a formal opinion that there was a “prima facie case” that Vote Leave submitted an inaccurate spending return and colluded with BeLeave, which was aimed at students. They were reviewing a dossier of evidence supplied by solicitors Bindmans, which contained examples of alleged collusion showing that Vote Leave and BeLeave were not separate and therefore that the leave campaign spent over the £7m legal limit set by the Electoral Commission.
MPs will debate the allegations in the Commons on Tuesday, after the Lib Dems secured an emergency debate. The dossier has also been passed to the Electoral Commission, which is responsible for election law.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/26/vote-leave-members-may-have-committed-criminal-offences
Bunch of crooked conspirators.
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