Brexiteers' funding

The Electoral Commission says it has "reasonable grounds to suspect an offence may have been committed" by the Vote Leave campaign. The offence relates to over-spending - there is a £7 million spending limit per organisation. When Vote Leave came near to their limit they 'donated' money to two other groups. This is allowed as long as it really is a donation with no strings attached. In this case it seems that the two groups spent the money as they were directed to by Vote Leave.

One of the beneficiaries was a fashion student who ran the BeLeave campaign. He personally (not his campaign) was 'given' £625,000 in cash (he was eligible to spend a maximum of £700,000) according to Vote Leave, but he says he never received it - the money went straight from Vote Leave to AggregateIQ (which Vote Leave used to place online ads). Vote Leave also 'donated' £100,000 to Veterans for Britain - again the money went to AggregateIQ.

So Vote Leave, having spent £6.8 million, paid AggregateIQ a further £725,000 using the thinnest of cover stories, taking them well over their spending limit.

Meanwhile, the other big anti-EU campaign, Leave.EU, is under investigation to see whether the donations it received were from overseas - another breach of electoral law. An American billionaire, Mr Mercer, told his data analytics company to provide services to Leave.EU for free. By law any donation of services worth more than £7,500 must be reported, but Leave.EU ignored this.

The technology itself is disturbing - the company harvested people's data from social media, using it to spread through their social networks in order to build a profile and then serve targeted adverts designed specifically for them.

Gibraltar is separately investigating the tax affairs of STM Group, which owns Leave.EU as a subsidiary. Leave.EU's founder, Arron Banks, had a major shareholding in STM Group. The investigation follows on from regulatory enforcement action taken by Gibraltar's financial regulator against the company Southern Rock Insurance. A company that has Mr Banks for its chief executive.

Mr Banks has in fact set up a number of different companies, registered at Companies House under different variations of his name. He has refused to explain his reasons for doing this.

Would it have made any difference if Vote Leave and Leave.EU had been honest in their campaign finances? Who can say. More importantly, why are their directors so desperate to break with the EU that they will break the law? What makes it worth many millions of pounds to them (Mr Banks donated at least £5 million to the campaigns)? Why do they and their political mouthpieces want Britain to leap off the cliff edge?

Escaping EU regulations would suit Mr Banks and his financier friends very nicely. The irony may be that the economic crunch will push Labour into power, with their policies of high corporate taxes and public ownership. Though given that one of Mr Banks's UK businesses only paid £12,000 tax on turnover of £19.7 million (due to "administrative expenses") he may not worry overmuch about taxes going up.