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UK election watchdog to launch review of Brexit Party finances
LONDON, May 20, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Britain’s Electoral Commission regulator
said on Monday it would review fundraising by the new Brexit Party founded by
anti-EU populist Nigel Farage, which is predicted to win this week’s European
elections.
“We are attending the Brexit Party’s office tomorrow to conduct a review of
the systems it has in place to receive funds,” a spokesperson for the
commission said in a statement.
“If there’s evidence that the law may have been broken, we will consider
that in line with our enforcement policy.”
The move follows a growing furore around the financing of the fledgling
eurosceptic party, set up by the controversial MEP in January in protest at
the government’s failure to deliver Brexit.
It claims to have registered nearly 110,000 supporters paying o25 ($32, 29
euros) annual membership fees, but has drawn scrutiny for using a PayPal
system that critics claim is too open.
British law only regulates donations to political parties over o500, which
must come from UK citizens or UK-registered companies.
Labour MP Chris Bryant was among those to raise concerns, saying it would
be “simple” for a foreign power or individual to donate “hundreds or
thousands of o499 in sterling or other currencies”.
“Our democracy is basically up for sale,” he said.
The Daily Mirror newspaper last week reported it had signed up as a Brexit
Party supporter under the name of Russian President Vladimir Putin, giving
the address of the Kremlin in Russia.
“The Brexit Party, like all registered political parties, has to comply
with laws that require any donation it accepts of over o500 to be from a
permissible source,” the commission added in its statement.
Farage has branded the increasing interest in his new venture’s funding a
“disgusting smear” and “conspiracy theorists doing their utmost to try and
delegitimise” it.
“This smacks of jealousy because the other parties simply can’t do this,”
he said Monday.
Meanwhile it emerged last week that businessman Arron Banks, the single
largest bankroller in the 2016 EU referendum, had spent around o450,000
funding Farage’s lifestyle.
The post-referendum expenses included paying for a central London home and
office for Farage, as well as a car and driver, according to Channel 4 News.
Banks, who is currently under investigation by Britain’s National Crime
Agency over the source of his millions of pounds in funding for the Brexit
campaign, also spent hundreds of thousands promoting Farage in the United
States, it said.
After a spokesperson for Banks’ companies confirmed the expenditures, the
Brexit Party leader dismissed them as “a purely private matter” and “non-
political”.
Farage added Banks was not financing the new party.
BSS/AFP/ARS/2030 hrs