Ahmet Gürhan Kartal
22 November 2016•Update: 22 November 2016
By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal
LONDON
A party which successfully campaigned for Britain to vote to leave the EU will face a financial investigation, the U.K.’s electoral watchdog said Tuesday.
The Electoral Commission’s decision to probe the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) followed a European Parliament investigation which alleged Monday UKIP misspent funds totaling thousands of pounds.
According to the European Parliament, almost £146,700 ($183,000) allocated for parliamentary business had been used to benefit the party itself.
A group to which UKIP belongs -- the Europe-wide ADDE (Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe) -- is at the center of that investigation.
The U.K.’s Electoral Commission confirmed Tuesday it had been contacted by the European Parliament which had “formally concluded that ADDE and IDDE [the Institute for Direct Democracy in Europe] used EU grant funding for the benefit of UKIP in breach of its rules”.
UKIP now faces a further investigation to see if its financing has been in breach of British electoral law.
The party’s interim leader, Nigel Farage, also made headlines Tuesday after a tweet from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump appeared to endorse Farage as a possible British ambassador to Washington.
Figures in the British government later denied there was a vacancy.
