{"id":137115,"date":"2014-08-15T14:55:46","date_gmt":"2014-08-15T14:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=137115"},"modified":"2014-08-15T14:55:46","modified_gmt":"2014-08-15T14:55:46","slug":"electoral-commission-scrutinises-donation-conservatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/electoral-commission-scrutinises-donation-conservatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Electoral Commission scrutinises donation to Conservatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Melanie Newman<\/em><\/p>\n

The Electoral Commission has agreed to scrutinise a donation connected to a Russian banker to the Conservative\u00a0Party following a complaint by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.<\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a0Bureau made the complaint on 8 July after the Party refused to comment on\u00a0whether Andrei Borodin, a former president of the Bank of Moscow, was behind a\u00a0\u00a340,000 purchase of a portrait of Margaret Thatcher auctioned at the Party\u2019s 2013 summer fundraiser.<\/span><\/p>\n

On 28 July the Commission confirmed it had opened\u00a0a \u201ccase review\u201d into the matter. The review\u00a0is expected to complete within 90 days.<\/span><\/p>\n

Electoral Commission records suggest that the black and white Thatcher portrait may have been\u00a0bought by Henley Concierge Ltd, a business registered to a cottage on Borodin\u2019s \u00a3120m country estate, Park Place, near Henley-on-Thames.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time the\u00a0company, which was only set up in November 2012 and is currently described on Companies House as \u201cnon-trading\u201d, was owned and run by Borodin\u2019s personal assistant and estate manager, Mario Hinterdorfer, an Austrian national.<\/span><\/p>\n

To be permissible, corporate donors must be genuinely carrying on business in the UK.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hinterdorfer, who had not previously donated to the Conservatives,\u00a0is understood to have left Borodin\u2019s employment in October 2013, returning to Austria. At the same time he resigned from Henley Concierge and transferred his shareholding to a new estate manager.<\/span><\/p>\n

Borodin has confirmed that he attended last year\u2019s party. But he says: \u2018I participated in no conversation on policy or party funding issues nor did I make any donation at the event.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u00a0and Hinterdorfer have not responded to\u00a0questions about either Henley Concierge or\u00a0the Thatcher portrait.<\/span><\/p>\n

Borodin and Hinterdorfer would have\u00a0needed to be\u00a0on the electoral roll in the UK in order to be eligible to personally buy the picture, which qualifies as a political donation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Political party treasurers are required to check the true source of a donation and, in the case of corporate donors, to satisfy themselves that companies are carrying on business in the UK.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last month\u00a0the Electoral Commission was heavily\u00a0<\/span>criticised<\/a>\u00a0by the Parliamentary Ombudsman for failing to make adequate enquiries about a donation made to the Liberal Democrats before confirming that the donation was permissible.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe size of the donations, the lack of any historical connection between the Party and the donor, the apparent foreign resident status of [the donor] and the fact that [his company] was a start up-company, were all flags to the Commission that it should monitor carefully whether all \u2018reasonable steps had been taken \u2026 to establish the permissibility of the donor,\u201d the Ombudsman\u2019s report said.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the Commission failed to seek evidence from the Liberal Democrats that these steps had been taken and then failed to review the situation having received relevant new information, the report added, concluding that the Commission was guilty of maladministration.<\/span><\/p>\n

This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Melanie Newman The Electoral Commission has agreed to scrutinise a donation connected to a Russian banker to the Conservative\u00a0Party following a complaint by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The\u00a0Bureau made the complaint on 8 July after the Party refused to comment on\u00a0whether Andrei Borodin, a former president of the Bank of Moscow, was behind a\u00a0\u00a340,000 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1615],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-137115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-uk-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}