Fresh detail has emerged from the investigation into whether Vote Leave breached a £7m spending limit during the referendum campaign by donating £625,000 to a fashion student.

The Electoral Commission has noted, in documents seen by the Guardian, that Darren Grimes, who was 23 at the time, was apparently able to coordinate large sums to be spent with a social media marketing firm before receiving official confirmation of the amounts Vote Leave were intending to give him.

Vote Leave, Grimes and a third group, Veterans for Britain, are under investigation by the election regulator over referendum spending. It was not against election rules for Vote Leave to donate to Grimes or other third parties as long as the spending was not coordinated.

Q&A Can the Electoral Commission inquiry undermine Brexit? Show Hide Campaigners on either side of the EU debate will have differing opinions on whether any adverse finding on spending calls the result of the referendum into question. However, Jo Maugham, the barrister behind the Good Law Project, said any illegal spending would undermine the result, adding to concerns about Russian meddling and Brexiters failing to deliver promises they made during the campaign. The commission can impose a fine of up to £20,000 for individual rule breaches. Any evidence of more serious offences uncovered in the course of the investigation can be referred to the police if warranted.

The watchdog reopened its investigation after an early decision not to take action was due to be challenged in a judicial review next month. A document submitted by the commission as part of the review process reveals the relationship between Vote Leave and Grimes.



It describes how Grimes told Vote Leave on 13 June last year he would like to use a donation offered at an unknown date the previous week on a digital campaign with Aggregate IQ. The referendum was held 10 days later.

Vote Leave told Grimes on 14 June that it had decided to donate £400,000 to him, the day after Vote Leave itself received a £1m donation, and Grimes provided his AIQ reference number for the payment to be made directly.



“It appears Mr Grimes was in a position to make arrangements with AIQ to provide services to him on 13 June ... before receiving confirmation of the amount to be donated,” the review said.

A third donation of £180,000 six days later was agreed within 22 minutes, the Electoral Commission found. The donation “appears to be the exact amount that Mr Grimes needed to pay AIQ for services he had apparently already agreed with them, despite there being a gap of only 22 minutes between the offer and his asking for it to be paid to AIQ”.

The Electoral Commission undertook the review amid proceedings launched by the Good Law Project, a crowd-funded legal campaign spearheaded by barrister Jolyon Maugham, to force a judicial review into the watchdog’s original decision not to proceed with investigations into Vote Leave and Grimes earlier this year.

Maugham said the document was proof that the Electoral Commission’s original assessment had been inadequate.

“The Electoral Commission claim there is new information,” Maugham told the Guardian. “But everything they rely on was already in the public domain – if you cared to look for it. I’m afraid the reality is that they just failed to do a proper investigation last time around.”

Maugham said he was still likely to press ahead with the legal proceedings, although the Commission argues its decision to reopen the investigation renders them moot.

Vote Leave’s legal limit as the designated leave campaign was £7m. It spent £6.8m according to official figures, spending 40% of that on services provided by Aggregate IQ. Grimes was permitted to spend up to £700,000 during the referendum campaign because he was an independent pro-leave campaigner.

Did Vote Leave commit a crime over its funding? Democracy demands to know | Jolyon Maugham Read more

The review, authored by the watchdog’s head of regulation, Louise Edwards, also said that the emergence of a donation by Vote Leave to a second organisation, Veterans for Britain, was key to its renewed investigation. Veterans of Britain also spend money with Aggregate IQ, in its case £100,000.

“The commission is now aware that there were two campaigners who apparently independently decided to use Vote Leave donations for AIQ services at or around the same time,” the review said, noting that Vote Leave also spent considerable sums with the small Canadian firm.

The commission said it now had increased knowledge of the financial links between the different leave campaigners, as well as the significance of the digital campaign as “a key technique in the referendum amongst an overlapping group of campaigners ... and a use of a small number of providers, including AIQ, for that campaigning”.

In a separate development, the commission also denied that it authorised the donations to Grimes or BeLeave, despite claims previously made by its campaign director, Dominic Cummings.

Cummings, a former senior aide to Michael Gove, tweeted in September that the Electoral Commission had been informed about Vote Leave’s intention to donate its extra income that would have otherwise put it above the spending limit.

In tweets to Maugham, Cummings wrote that the Electoral Commission “gave us written permission in advance for what we did. When they suddenly told us we could make donations we were so shocked we asked for written confirmation and got it.”

Vote Leave inquiry: what is Electoral Commission investigating? Read more

Cummings described it as “extremely surprising” but said it would be “pointless them having an investigation/reporting us to cops cos we’d just hand over their own letter giving permission”. Cummings did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

Vote Leave sources added the campaign had asked the Electoral Commission what it could do with additional funds raised, which would put it over the £7m limit, and had been told it could donate the funds to external campaigns.

The decision to give the money to Grimes, whose campaign had been focused on social media until then, was a calculated risk and the campaign would not have been able to object if he had spent it elsewhere, sources said.

A spokesman for the Electoral Commission said: “We don’t ‘clear’ donations. Any donation made by Vote Leave was a decision for it. We had no correspondence with Vote Leave, Mr Grimes or BeLeave about Vote Leave’s decision to donate.

“Consequently, as we had no correspondence with any of the organisations involved seeking or giving ‘clearance’ to these donations, we have nothing of that nature to release under any past or further FOI request.”