The Leave campaign cheated

The shady shenanigans continue.

The Electoral Commission has reopened an investigation into Vote Leave's EU referendum spending. The campaign denies attempting to get round spending limits - the Electoral Commission initially accepted this but now says it has new information. A group of campaigning lawyers, The Good Law Project, has started legal action against the commission over its original decision to drop the investigation, claiming the watchdog was not doing its job properly.

The row centres around Darren Grimes, at the time a fashion student at the University of Brighton, who set up a group called BeLeave, to give young pro-Brexit campaigners a voice during last year's referendum. As a registered campaigner, he was allowed to spend up to £700,000. He initially spent very little but in the 10 days leading up to the 23 June vote he ran up a £675,315 bill with AggregateIQ Data, a Canadian marketing firm that specialises in political campaigns.

Money to clear the bill was not given to Mr Grimes but sent directly to Aggregate IQ by Vote Leave, which separately spent £2.7m with the same firm, more than a third of its £6.8m budget. Mr Grimes also received £50,000 from an individual Vote Leave donor in the final 10 days, making the previously obscure campaigner's group one of the best-funded at the referendum.

Vote Leave would have gone over its campaign spending limit if it had spent the money it donated on behalf of Mr Grimes itself. The campaign group said it made the donation to Mr Grimes because it was coming up to its £7m spending limit and wanted a way of using £9.2m it had raised from individuals and companies on campaigning activities. The Electoral Commission said in March this was an "acceptable method of donating under the rules" and after a "detailed look" at the case it did not find reasonable grounds to suspect an offence had been committed.

The new probe will look at whether the spending returns delivered by Mr Grimes, Veterans for Britain and Vote Leave were correct - and whether or not Vote Leave exceeded its spending limit. In April, the Electoral Commission launched a separate investigation into spending during the referendum by Leave.EU, the campaign backed by then-UKIP leader Nigel Farage and donor Arron Banks. It is also investigating spending by the anti-Brexit campaign Britain Stronger in Europe.

Not sure what they'd do if they found spending broke the rules though. Make them say sorry on the side of a big red bus ?
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-42055523