Lib Dems fined £20k and reported to police over £184,676 of fraudulent expenditure

The Lib Dems have been hit with the maximum £20k fine for making false expenditure declarations totalling £184,676.

An Electoral Commission found 307 items of expenditure from last year's general election we fraudulently split between local and national campaigns. They consider the offence so serious that they have also reported the party to the Metropolitan Police to consider criminal charges.

The Electoral Commission is also calling on the British government to give them more powers as they rightly point out that a £20k fine is peanuts when parties are spending millions on election campaigns. The Electoral Commission should be able to impose larger fines, recover fraudulent expenditure and issue court proceedings itself, including petitions to nullify election results. It is ridiculous that the body responsible for ensuring elections are free, fair and not corrupt is basically powerless to prevent corrupt practices.

Electoral Commission remove BNP for political party register

The British National Party is no longer a registered UK political party after the Electoral Commission struck them off the list.

The BNP has failed to submit the required paperwork or pay the registration fee to maintain its registration so from today, there is no such thing as the British National Party.

At the height of its success in 2009 the BNP had two MEPs elected in the north east of England and Yorkshire & the Humber, a member of the London Assembly, 50 councillors and were the official opposition group on Barking & Dagenham Council. In a little over 6 years they lost all their councillors, their London Assembly member, both their MEPs, their leader openly admitted to being a racist live on TV before resigning and now they've finally ceased to exist.

While it's great news that the BNP may have ceased to exist, the poisonous politics they represented haven't gone away. The footsoldiers of the BNP can be found in the English Democrats, Britain First, the EDL and other far right groups which we must continue to fight both at the ballot box and on the doorstep.

Labour fined by Electoral Commission for late payments

The Labour Party has been fined £1,848 by the Electoral Commission for failing to pay invoices within the 30 days required by law.

The Electoral Commission felt that the Labour Party's experience and resources meant that it was unacceptable to pay 13 invoices totalling £48k (or 5% of their election spending) late. The law requires all invoices to be paid within 30 days of an election.

The Labour Party are appealing the fine in the county court.

Electoral Commission petitioned to remove Tower Hamlets councillors from office

One of the men who brought the case against the former mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman, that saw a special election court remove him from office is taking his fight for democracy further by petitioning for all 17 councillors elected under the now banned Tower Hamlets First Party name removed from office.

Lutfur Rahman was found guilty of 7 charges of vote rigging, lying about his rivals, bribery and exerting spiritual influence during the election campaign that saw his party take control of the borough and him elected as mayor. After his conviction the Labour Party, Respect Party and Unite the Union rallied round him, describing his removal from office as "anti-democratic, anti-Islamic and racist".

Azmal Hussein has petitioned the Electoral Commission to remove the Tower Hamlets First councillors who were elected in the same corrupt election from office and call a by-election. If the Electoral Commission refuses then he intends to go to the High Court to ask a judge to remove them.

Britain First allowed to use Lee Rigby's name on ballot papers

The Electoral Commission has apologised to the family of murdered soldier Lee Rigby after allowing the extremist Britain First Party to use the slogan "Remember Lee Rigby" on ballot papers in Wales.

The anti-Islam party, which has links to the BNP, EDL and English Democrats, is only contesting EU elections in Wales and Scotland and has a different slogan registered for Scotland so most people will be spared from their opportunist propaganda.

UKIP is the only party to ban past and present members of Britain First and other racist parties and organisation from joining.

UKIP receives fifth highest donations in 2012

UKIP received the fifth highest amount of donations to a political party in 2012 according to the Electoral Commission.

Labour received and spent the most by quite a margin even without adding in donations laundered through the Co-operative Party.  The Tories were the second highest funded party followed by the Lib Dems and the SNP.  UKIP narrowly beat the Co-operative Party and Sinn Féin to receive the fifth highest level of donations.

The Lib Dems, SNP, Sinn Féin and SDLP all spent more money than they received - over £300k more in the case of the Lib Dems and SNP.

Party	Income
Labour	£33,024,000
Conservatives	£24,348,000
Lib Dems	£6,023,543
SNP	£2,300,459
UKIP	£1,227,802
Co-operative Party	£1,180,584
Sinn Féin	£1,090,792
Green Party	£781,478
Plaid Cymru	£683,284
BNP	£646,843
DUP	£479,360
UUP	£381,404
SDLP	£338,177

BNP fined for late accounts

The Electoral Commission has fined the BNP for filing its 2010 accounts late.

The accounts were eventually filed with the Electoral Commission in February this year and resulted in a £2,700 fine.

The Electoral Commission said:

People have a right to know how parties are funded and how they spend their money.

Quite.  We're still waiting for an explanation as to why the Lib Dems were allowed to keep £2.4m of stolen money donated to them by convicted fraudster Micheal Brown through his offshore company that doesn't trade in the UK whilst UKIP was pursued relentlessly through the courts by the Electoral Commission for the forfeiture of £350k donated by a retired bookmaker who lives in the UK and isn't a crook but who was mysteriously removed from the electoral register by his local authority without his knowledge.

It's absolutely right to fine the BNP because they wilfully broke electoral law by not filing their accounts in the full knowledge that they were breaking the law and would be fined.  The Electoral Commission is very uneven in the enforcement of its rules though, giving the LibLabCon a free rein to take money from crooks and frauds but coming down hard on anyone who challenges the status quo.

Electoral Commission investigating Labour donations

Back in June we took a look at the Labour Party's funding, concluding that as much as 90% of their donations came either directly or indirectly from the taxpayer.

There were three dubious donations in the Labour Party's returns totalling over £23k from the Australian Labor Party, an unincorporated organisation that turned out to be a limited company and a company that doesn't appear to have been trading for a couple of years.  According to the Electoral Commission, the donation from the Australian Labor Party is legally permissible as it was to pay the costs of a political visit.  The other two donations are still under investigation so we'll have to wait and see if they've been taking dodgy donations and if the Electoral Commission will make them pay them back.

English Democrats collapse in London

The England Watch blog has been looking at the English Democrats' efforts in the London elections ... or rather the lack of effort.

The EDP have been desperately trying to find people to put themselves forward as a candidate:

... we need to stand over 374 candidates, so even if you wouldn’t be able to do any more than just put your nomination papers in, and would therefore stand just as a paper candidate, please do let us know if you would be willing to do this to help us to get a Party Election Broadcast across England

This time round the EDP are standing only one candidate in the super constituencies: former BNP member, Mark Twiddy.  Last time they put forward 13 candidates.  In 2008 they put up 24 London-wide candidates, this time they've got 8 - one is a former senior BNP member and another is an EDL supporter.  Last time they sort of had a candidate for mayor in Fathers4Justice leader Matt O'Connor who resigned from the party at the eleventh hour because of their dishonesty and chronic incompetence.  This time they have no mayoral candidate.  Last time they had a party election broadcast.  This time they couldn't even scrape together enough paper candidates to qualify for one.

But rather than try and make the best out of a pretty pathetic showing, their London campaign guru, Steve Uncles, is spending most of his time attacking UKIP on his English Pisspot blog.  He has even claimed that independent mayoral candidate, Siobhan Benita, is supporting the English Democrats complete with fabricated quotes and a dodgy photoshopped picture of her with the EDP candidates - surely a breach of Electoral Commission rules and possibly even a criminal offence under the Representation of the People Act 1983?  We'll soon find out, it's been reported to the Electoral Commission this morning and we've informed Benita's campaign manger.  Benita might not be very complimentary towards UKIP but she's yet another victim of the English Democrats' bungling incompetence and dirty tricks.

UKIP appealing against Electoral Commission vendetta in Supreme Court

UKIP has been given permission to take its appeal against the sock puppet Electoral Commission's vendetta against the party to the Supreme Court.

Alan Bown suspiciously disappeared off the electoral register after he switched allegiances from the Conservatives to UKIP.  The Electoral Commission ordered the forfeiture of £363k in donations that Alan Bown made during the time he was taken off the electoral register.  UKIP went to court over the decision and the judge ruled that it was an honest mistake and reduced the forfeiture to £18k.

The Electoral Commission, official defenders of the status quo, didn't like losing and appealed the decision in the High Court who ruled in their favour and reinstated the full forfeiture of £363k.  Around the same time, the Electoral Commission announced that it wouldn't be ordering the Lib Dims to repay £2.4m in illegal donations made using the proceeds of crime from a convicted criminal living abroad!

In other words this is yet another UK/EU stitch-up aimed at trying to bring down the only party challenging the cosy EU love-in of the LibLabCon.

Lib Dims can keep stolen money

The sockpuppet Electoral Commission have told the Lib Dims that they can keep the £2.4m of stolen money donated to them by a convicted fraudster via an investment company he owned that doesn't trade in the UK.

The Lib Dims won't have to pay back the stolen money illegally donated to them because the Electoral Commission said that they acted in good faith and that the company, despite all the evidence to the contrary, fits the criteria of being registered trading in the UK.

Contrast this decision - being allowed to keep £2.4m of stolen money from a convicted fraudster - with the decision to confiscate £350k from UKIP because the donor, Alan Bown, was mysteriously taken off the electoral register without his knowledge at the time despite a judge having ruled that it was a genuine mistake and ordering UKIP to repay only a token amount of the donations.

The real mission of the Electoral Commission is not to regulate and reform the electoral process, but to maintain the pro-EU LibLabCon status quo.

Spot the difference: LibDem & UKIP donor controversies

Well done to Michael Crick for pointing out the differences in the way the LibDems and UKIP are treated with regard to what it the BBC considers to be iffy donations.

Fairness from the BBC!

Iain Dale has also covered this - and has received some interesting replies to his "Spot the difference(s)":

Case A: Alan Bown gave a political party £363,697

1) It was his money
2) He had a business trading in this country, making him eligible to donate money
3) He was not on the electoral register when he donated although he was the year before, and also the year afterwards.

Case B: Michael Brown gave a political party £2.7m

1) It was not his money, he had defrauded it
2) His business was not trading in the UK, so therefore he was ineligible to donate money
3) He was not on the electoral register; neither was he the year afterwards, nor the year before.

Can you find more?

Cross-posted

One rule for the eurofederalists ...

In August 2007 UKIP was told to repay £18,481 of £367,697 in illegal donations by a judge after the Electoral Commission brought charges.

It was obvious at the time that UKIP was being unfairly targeted - the Electoral Commission used UKIP to test the law on donations that had been brought in following the fraud and corruption of the LibLabCon coalition even though the Tories and Lib Dems had been investigated for much larger and more dubious illegal donations around the same time. In other words, UKIP was made a scapegoat, most likely because they thought the party could be bankrupted by the legal action.

For those of you that don't remember the case in question, I wrote about it at the time on my own blog - click here, here and here.

The Electoral Commission said that it would appeal the decision and it has finally got permission from the High Court to appeal the case back to Westminster Magistrates Court. UKIP has no debts, increasing membership, a number of wealthy supporters and a projected vote-share in the upcoming EU elections that will give the LibLabCon coalition a run for its money. You'd have to be a real cynic to draw any conclusions about the timing ...