Britain’s Electoral Commission has fined the country’s official Brexit campaign group for violating campaign spending limits and referred the case to the police.
The commission said Tuesday that Vote Leave had exceeded its mandatory spending limit in its stunning victory in the 2016 referendum of $9.3 million by over $600,000. It said Vote Leave worked with a BeLeave, a smaller pro-Brexit group, to get around campaign finance rules.
Bob Posner, the commission’s director of political finance and regulation, said there was substantial evidence that Vote Leave and BeLeave “worked to a common plan” and “did not declare their joint working.”
Posner said Vote Leave has been fined over $80,000 and referred the case to the police for false declarations of campaign spending.
A spokesman for Vote Leave said the Electoral Commission’s report was filled with “a number of false accusations” and accused the commission of being “motivated by a political agenda.”