As the Democratic Unionist Party’s Brexit campaign manager, Jeffrey Donaldson was in charge of making sure due diligence was done on all donations. But the Lagan Valley MP has admitted he didn’t know that the man who fronted a £435,000 donation to his party just weeks before the EU referendum had close links to the Saudi Arabian intelligence service.
And he has claimed he ‘can’t remember’ how the party found out about the obscure Canadian company linked to Trump backer Robert Mercer and at the centre of a new Brexit campaign scandal.
In February, on the back of an openDemocracy investigation into their extraordinary campaign expenditure, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was forced to admit it had been paid £435,000 by a previously unheard of unincorporated association called the Constitutional Research Council (CRC). The money was used to help fund “Leave” advertisements across the UK ahead of last year’s referendum.
Now, Jeffrey Donaldson MP has admitted to openDemocracy that he didn’t know that Richard Cook, chair of the Constitutional Research Council, had founded a company in 2013 with prince Nawwaf bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. Prince Nawwaf is a former director general of the Saudi Arabian intelligence agency and father of the Saudi ambassador to the UK.
