If Northern Ireland were a normal democracy, the election campaign would be dominated by a single question: how did the Democratic Unionist Party end up advancing the cause of a united Ireland through its support for Brexit? More specifically: what role did dark money play in that extraordinary decision?
This story has all the makings of a John le Carré thriller but democracy on this island needs facts, not fiction.
To recap briefly: two days before the Brexit referendum last June, the Metro freesheet in London and other British cities came wrapped in a four-page glossy propaganda supplement urging readers to vote Leave. Bizarrely, it was paid for by the DUP, even though Metro does not circulate in Northern Ireland. At the time, the DUP refused to say what the ads cost or where the money came from.
We’ve since learned that the Metro wraparound cost a staggering £282,000 (€330,000) – surely the biggest single campaign expense in the history of Irish politics. For context, the DUP had spent about £90,000 (€106,000) on its entire campaign for the previous month’s assembly elections. But this was not all: the DUP eventually admitted that this spending came from a much larger donation of £425,622 (€530,000) from a mysterious organisation, the Constitutional Research Council. Read More
Despite claims by the DUP that it has now named its donors, almost nothing is known about the Constitutional Research Council. This shadowy group has no formal or legal status and refuses to name its members, if it has any. There is no evidence that it has any way of generating income, giving it the appearance of a front organisation, set up to funnel money from secretive sources into political campaigns.
The DUP has told openDemocracy that they “don’t need to know” who the individuals behind the CRC donations are. This admission raises questions about how much the DUP checked about where the £425,000 donation was coming from, which Electoral Commission guidelines indicate they should. However, the DUP did name the CRC’s chair: former Scottish Conservative parliamentary candidate, Richard Cook.
Source: www.opendemocracy.net/uk/peter-geoghegan-adam-ramsay/mysterious-dup-brexit-donation-plot-thickens
