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Three top barristers have concluded there is a possible case for criminal prosecutions in the scandal over alleged cheating in the Brexit referendum, it is revealed today.

A 46-page legal opinion prepared by the trio has been handed to the Electoral Commission, which is already looking into allegations of rule-breaking, with a call to investigate whether the law was broken.

A whistleblower at the heart of the claims said it raised questions about whether the June 2016 referendum that voted narrowly for Brexit was “won fairly”.

Solicitor Tamsin Allen, partner at Bindmans LLP which represents two whistleblowers who have made allegations of the misuse of data and illicit co-ordination between supposedly separate campaign groups, told the Standard: “We have now analysed a substantial body of evidence and instructed leading counsel Clare Montgomery QC, Helen Mountfield QC and Ben Silverstone to advise.

“They have prepared a 46-page opinion which states that, on the evidence they have seen, there is a prima facie case that criminal offences were committed by Vote Leave during the Referendum Campaign.”

Shahmir Sanni, who helped run BeLeave, a group that aimed to get young people to vote Brexit, said he believed the 2016 vote was now tainted. “They take away your medal if you are caught cheating at the Olympics,” he said.

“Because it’s about making sure the process is fair. If Vote Leave cheated in the referendum, we have to ask ourselves if we want to trust a vote that wasn’t won fairly.”

Vote Leave strongly denies any wrongdoing. But Mr Sanni has alleged that there continued to be co-ordination with them after his group split off and received £625,000 from Vote Leave. If true, that could suggest Vote Leave used BeLeave as a conduit for cash that it could not spend itself without breaching spending limits.

Vote Leave supporters countered by saying Mr Sanni was in a relationship during the campaign with then senior Vote Leave figure Stephen Parkinson, who is now the Prime Minister’s political secretary at No 10, and any campaign talk between them was as friends.

Today’s edition of The Times reported that Mr Parkinson was under pressure to resign after a row at No 10 over who authorised the statement that effectively “outed” Mr Sanni as gay.

Two No 10 sources told the Standard that he was not expected to quit. Mr Sanni insisted today it was a red herring: “Regardless of what Downing Street said, this is not about a personal relationship. It’s about binders full of documented evidence that calls into question whether Vote Leave cheated.”

The second whistleblower, Christopher Wylie, who last week alleged that personal data was hijacked from Facebook users for campaigning, said the key question now was why BeLeave decided to spend the £625,000 from Vote Leave with an obscure Canadian data firm called AggregateIQ. “After what we saw last week, we should be asking what AggregateIQ was actually doing in the referendum,” he said.

“British authorities can’t get evidence from AIQ because they are based in another country outside of UK jurisdiction.” Mr Wylie, who worked for Cambridge Analytica, the firm that obtained the Facebook data in 2014, said: “People should know that AggregateIQ was set up to support Cambridge Analytica.”

Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ deny any wrongdoing.

Further details of a BeLeave Google drive that Mr Sanni’s supporters regard as a “smoking gun” in the affair were revealed today.

A screenshot of the drive, used by BeLeave to store documents, was published on the Fair Vote UK website which suggested a document was accessed by a senior Vote Leave official on June 19, 2016, days before the referendum. Fair Vote project director Kyle Taylor said: “If they weren’t co-ordinating their work after the payment then why did Vote Leave staff, BeLeave volunteers and AggregateIQ staff all have access to their files and folders?”

Mr Sanni was BeLeave’s secretary and treasurer, while Mr Parkinson was head of Vote Leave’s ground campaign. Under limits monitored by the Electoral Commission, Vote Leave was not allowed to spend more than £7 million during the referendum campaign.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who played a leading role in Vote Leave, has dismissed as “ludicrous” the allegation that the campaign broke election spending rules.

Mr Parkinson and Vote Leave have also strongly denied wrongdoing and said the £625,000 donated to BeLeave was within the rules which allowed money to go to other, independent, campaigns.

Darren Grimes, who was in charge of BeLeave, has denied there was any collaboration with Vote Leave on campaign material or spending.

Eloise Todd, of anti-Brexit group Best for Britain said: “The police and Electoral Commission must investigate quickly to get to the bottom of this.”