UK Election Body Finds Brexit Campaign Guilty of Breaking Rules - Ex-Leave Chief

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Matthew Elliott, the former chief executive of Vote Leave, the official leave campaign of the Brexit referendum, said Wednesday that in its draft report the UK Electoral Commission (EC) had found that the campaign breached spending rules during the vote on leaving the European Union.

"Their initial conclusion is that we have overspent, that a donation we made to another group during the course of the campaign was incorrect, we shouldn't have made that donation. … They've listened to these, quite frankly marginal characters who came out in March, and listened to their stories, but haven't had evidence from Vote Leave side of things," the Sky News broadcaster quoted Elliott's interview with the channel.

The EC has not released its report yet, but it is expected to be published soon.

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Elliot refers to three whistleblowers, who said that Vote Leave funded a proxy youth campaign, BeLeave, to override spending limit of seven million pounds ($9.2 million) set by the Electoral Commission.

On June 23, 2016, the United Kingdom voted in a referendum to leave the European Union. Last March, UK Prime Minister Theresa May officially invoked Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, launching the process of the country's withdrawal from the bloc. The Brexit negotiations between London and the European Union started last year and are due to be completed by the end of March 2019.