A millionaire who gave £50,000 to a 23-year-old fashion student to spend on the campaign to exit the EU says that he was advised to make the donation by the Brexit-backing campaign group Vote Leave.

Hedge fund manager Anthony Clake told the Guardian that he had intended to give the money to Vote Leave, as the official leave campaign, but was encouraged by the group not to do so because “they were close to their spending limits”.

Instead, Clake was advised to give the money to Darren Grimes, who had a separate spending limit as an independent pro-leave campaigner. Grimes passed the money straight to a social media consultancy also hired by Vote Leave. Under UK electoral law, it could be an offence if Vote Leave colluded with Grimes to pass the money to the consultancy, which is called AggregateIQ.

Grimes is already facing an Electoral Commission inquiry over whether his spending was co-ordinated with Vote Leave.



There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Clake. But the businessman’s revelation that he was encouraged to donate the money to Grimes by Vote Leave puts new pressure on the organisation over its approach to campaign spending. His statement is the first evidence that Vote Leave encouraged a potential donor to give money to other leave campaigns.

Last month, the Electoral Commission announced an investigation into three groups which campaigned for a Leave vote in last year’s referendum, saying it had “reasonable grounds to suspect an offence may have been committed”.

The investigation hinges on Vote Leave’s decision to make donations totalling £625,000 to Grimes, then a 23-year-old fashion student, in the final days of the referendum. Grimes spent the entirety of the money with AggregateIQ.

Separately to the money it donated to Grimes, Vote Leave spent £2.7m, around 40% of its total spending of £6.7m, with AggregateIQ. As the designated leave campaigning organisation, its spending was capped by law at £7m.

Grimes, as chair of a different campaign group called BeLeave, had a spending cap of £700,000 and spent £675,000 in total. The source of £625,000 of this money was Vote Leave, with the remaining £50,000 provided by Clake.

A spokesperson for Clake confirmed that he had discussed his donation to Grimes with Vote Leave.

“Anthony Clake offered to make a donation to Vote Leave,” the spokesperson said. “They said they were close to their spending limits and suggested he offer the excess to two other campaigns on the same side of the debate; BeLeave [Grimes] and Muslims for Britain. He gave the donation to BeLeave.”

The day after his donation to Grimes, Vote Leave received £40,000 from Clake.

Asked what he understood the relationship between the two campaigners to be, the spokesperson said “Apart from them being on the same side in the referendum, he has no knowledge of any relationship between them. That is a matter for the two campaigns and the Electoral Commission.”

Grimes did not respond to a request for comment. Last year, he told the Electoral Commission that Vote Leave “had no say or input in our strategy or our campaign spending,” according to emails published by The Ferret, a Scottish investigative journalism website.

A spokesperson for Vote Leave said: “Vote Leave complied with both the spirit and the letter of the Electoral Commission’s rules and the spending limits.

“We will continue to assist the Electoral Commission in this investigation – which is now the third time that they have looked into the same evidence.”

Clake’s spokesperson also said he had not been approached by the Electoral Commission in connection with its investigation into Vote Leave and Grimes. The Electoral Commission declined to comment.

Grimes has previously told OpenDemocracy that he never received cash from either Vote Leave or Clake, and that both donors paid AggregateIQ directly.

Clake, 37, reportedly oversees around $10bn at Marshall Wace and last year was identified by Sky News as the largest backer of a plan to extend Heathrow Airport’s northern runway.