The Electoral Commission decided that “it would not be in the public interest to investigate” even if Vote Leave broke the law by coordinating with the Democratic Unionist Party during the 2016 Brexit referendum, new documents reveal.
The elections watchdog also said that money obtained from crime might not make a political donation unlawful. The comments were made following concerns raised in a BBC Northern Ireland documentary about a secretive £435,000 donation given to the DUP’s Brexit campaign.
Last week, Vote Leave dropped its appeal against the Electoral Commission’s ruling that it broke the law in a different way – by channelling hundreds of thousands of pounds of donations to BeLeave, another pro-Brexit campaign group. The official Vote Leave campaign, whose leaders included Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, has been fined multiple times and referred to the Metropolitan Police for breaking electoral law.
