Thread by @localnotail

Is there an official list of all the times the Leave campaign lied cheated / broke the law? It's a busy day but I could have a go at this as I get time... (thread)
#CrookedVoteLeave

11 MAY 2016 Electoral Commission struck off 11 pro-Brexit campaign "Grassroots Out" groups from their official register of EU Referendum campaigners after it was discovered that they shared the same address, Lysander House in Bristol (= Arron Banks)
telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/1…

May 2016 Better for the Country ltd (aka Leave.EU) fined for sending 500K pro-Brexit text messages to customers without consent.
itv.com/news/2016-05-1…

October 2016 Emails obtained by a GP under the Freedom of Information Act showed the VoteLeave campaign was repeatedly warned by the Department of Health for England not to use the NHS logo ahead of the vote. Not sure what happened to threatened lawsuit bmj.com/bmj/section-pd…

October 2016 Small fines for (apparently) independent Leave campaigners who failed to observe proper conduct in print advertising electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/journal…

June 2017 Brexit supporter (& Butlins owner) Peter Harris, was hit with a £12,000 fine for breaking the rules with his Leave campaigning by failing to submit returns on time: bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi…

Got to stop for a bit, mumstuff, will pick up later unless someone else wants to take over digging

There are a few more small fines for groups that didn't do their paperwork right. Mr Henry Meakin £1,500 (July 2017) Campaign for an Independent England £1000 (October 2017)

December 2017 ICO announced an (ongoing) investigation into data misuse in politics.
UKIP refused to co-operate.
A recent tribunal found that "information supplied by the party thus far is “brief, inadequate and, in some instances, possibly inaccurate”. publictechnology.net/articles/news/…

Other actions taken by ICO so far include a criminal prosecution against SCL Elections Ltd – the parent company of Cambridge Analytica – for failing to comply with an earlier enforcement notice, compelling the firm to deal with a subject access request. They're in administration.

Aggregate IQ were also investigated. The ICO found they “had access to personal data of UK voters provided by the Vote Leave campaign” has been handed an enforcement notice requiring the firm “to stop processing retained UK citizen data”.

As far as I know the ICO have not turned their attention to the data breach at (Brexit fans) Wetherspoons in 2015, where 656,723 personal details were acquired by an unknown source.
Wetherspoons decided to delete their entire customer database in June 2017 gdpr.report/news/2017/06/3…

Still think @ElectoralCommUK should investigate links b/w BeLeave + News Group Newspapers
The Sun had a front page "BeLeave in Britain" splash 14th June & then a pull-out BeLeave poster which cost £96K & meant they had to register as a Leave campaign group amp.theguardian.com/media/2016/nov…

I really want to know who wrote this damning assessment of Vote Leave that was submitted to @ElectoralCommUK. I can only imagine it came from Farage & co after they failed to get the official designation. It's superbitchy
You might want some popcorn.
electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/…

Seems they were pretty open from the start about their intent to break spending rules. "Vote Leave has stated it has plans to break the referendum spending limits, has been involved in self-proclaimed ͞nasty͟ and deceptive campaigning "
thetimes.co.uk/article/brexit…

May 2018 - Leave.EU fined £70K by the EC who concluded that LeaveEU incorrectly reported what it spent at the EU referendum. It exceeded its statutory spending limit & delivered incomplete and inaccurate spending and transaction returns
electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/journal…

That shows the full extent of LeaveEU's rule-breaking was huge, with a number of different elements to it. Leave.EU failed to include at least £77,380 in its spending return, thereby exceeding the spending limit for non-party registered campaigners by at least 10%

The Commission also considers the unlawful over-spend may well have been considerably higher than that. Services the group received from the US campaign strategy firm Goddard Gunster were not included in the spending return, despite a proportion of them having been used in EURef

Finally, LeaveEU failed to provide details for 97 payments of over £200, totalling £80,224.
The Commission also has reasonable grounds to suspect that the responsible person for LeaveEU committed criminal offences and she has therefore been referred to the Metropolitan Police.

JUly 2018 EC published the conclusions of its investigation into the campaign spending of Vote Leave and a number of other campaigners, and has found Vote Leave and Darren Grimes broke electoral law.
electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/journal…

Evidence shows that BeLeave spent more than £675,000 with Aggregate IQ under a common plan with Vote Leave. This spending should have been declared by Vote Leave exceeding its legal spending limit of £7 million by almost £500,000. Also £234,501 misreported & £12,849.99 uninvoiced

Darren Grimes, founder of the BeLeave campaign group, was fined £20,000 for committing two offences. Mr Grimes spent more than £675,000 on behalf of BeLeave, a non-registered campaigner with a spending limit of £10,000.
Further, he wrongly reported that same spending as his own.

In November 2017 EC announced it was also investigating Arron Banks & Better For the Country Ltd but I'm not sure that one has been concluded yet.
It's a doozy, with a number of interesting elements.
Mr Banks appears to have removed himself to the Bahamas
electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/journal…

As an aside, I may be mistaken but I'm sure I keep seeing people claiming that Remain had more donations than Leave but according to this, it was the other way around for declarable donations (>£7500) anyway:
Remain: £14,867,376
Leave: £18,136,510
electoralcommission.org.uk/find-informati… …

Then there was this from the DUP who are propping up Theresa May's government.
A 4-page, wrap-around cover advert in the Metro newspaper promoting the Leave campaign ahead of the Referendum in June 2016 costing £282,000.
The Metro isn't published in NI.
independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…

Forgot this one!
June 2016 Vote Leave set up a voter registration advert that the link was not to the official Electoral Commission page and would not register a potential voter but simply added them to the Vote Leave mailing list.
#VoteLeaveCheated

politicalscrapbook.net/2016/06/vote-l…

Evidence of interference in the Brexit vote in Leave's favour around the Referendum date from social media bots (from Russia). Manufacturing consensus.
techcrunch.com/2017/11/15/stu…

All these dodgy adverts from Vote Leave during the Referendum with no imprint
The Football One
#VoteLeaveCheated

https://mobile.twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1022568039450075145

And all of these dodgy Vote Leave Facebook adverts are insane. How was this allowed?

https://mobile.twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1022596449207574528

It just gets worse and worse

https://mobile.twitter.com/veritasta/status/1022752615447375872