Ashcroft donations cleared by commission
Updated on 04 March 2010
The Electoral Commission has declared that donations worth £5.1 million to the Conservatives from a firm belonging to Lord Ashcroft were legal.
Lord Ashcroft, the Tories' biggest donor, has made donations worth more than £5.1 million, mainly through his company Bearwood Corporate Services.
The Electoral Commission has ruled the donations, made to the party between February 2003 and the end of 2009, met the "permissibility requirements" for making political donations.
The donations have been subject of an 18 month investigation. It was claimed the UK-registered company was not carrying out business in Britain and is therefore ineligible to donate.
It follows allegations the firm was the beneficiary of cash which had been moved, through a series of deals, from a Belize based company called Stargate Holdings.
Jenny Watson, Chair of the Electoral Commission, said: "The Electoral Commission has conducted a thorough investigation within the powers available to us – which are limited in some respects - to examine whether or not the rules on donations agreed by Parliament had been broken.
"The law requires that to be a permissible donor, a company must be registered at Companies House, or incorporated in the EU, and carrying on business in the UK. The Commission has concluded that Bearwood Corporate Services Limited met those tests."
"We had concerns, based on some of the evidence, about the degree of certainty within the Conservative Party about the identity of the donor, but based on the evidence before us, the Commission considered that there was not sufficient evidence to conclude that the party was uncertain about the identity of the donor when they accepted the donations."
The claims were reported to the Commission by the Labour MP John Mann. He was concerned the billionaire's money was being used to boost Conservative candidates' chances in key marginal seats in the forthcoming election.
A Conservative spokesman said the party has "a clean bill of health".
"Following an 18-month investigation, the Electoral Commission has definitively concluded that donations made by Bearwood, the company in which Lord Ashcroft has an interest, were legal, permissible and correctly reported," he said.
However, this is unlikely to be the end of questions about Ashcroft's donations. The Lord has been called to appear before an influential committee of MPs amid controversy over his peerage.
The Public Administration Select Committee has decided to hold a "special one-off inquiry" into Lord Ashcroft on 18 March.
