Fine over £100,000 Scottish Tory donation

A Scottish Conservative fundraising group has been fined £400 by the Electoral Commission for failing to properly register a £100,000 donation.

The fine was imposed on the Irvine Unionist Club over its "failure to provide notification of gifts to a political party exceeding £25,000".

The donation was handed over to the Scottish Conservatives in March 2016.

A complaint was made about the donation from the unincorporated association after details emerged last year.

At the time, the openDemocracy website said it had been told by the treasurer of the Irvine Unionist Club that the donation had been made because the trust was being wound down.

He also said he believed the cash had come from the sale of a building a number of years earlier.

• Ex-Tory MP dismisses 'dark money' claims

Any group donating more than £25,000 to a political party must be registered with the Electoral Commission.

The website discovered that the Irvine Unionist Club was not registered, and made a formal complaint.

The Electoral Commission announced on Tuesday that its investigation concluded that the rules had been breached, and a £400 fine had been imposed. The fine was paid last month.

A spokeswoman for the commission said: "Unincorporated associations, such as the Irvine Unionist Club, must register with the Electoral Commission when they make political contributions of more than £25,000 in a calendar year and must report any relevant gifts that they have received.

"This ensures there is transparency about funding of political campaigning. Irvine Unionist Club failed to comply with these rules and the Electoral Commission has fined them £400."

Paid the fine

The Scottish Conservatives said the trustees of the Irvine Unionist Club accepted that they were at fault, and had paid the fine. The party also stressed that it was not investigated nor subject to any fine.

But the SNP and Labour claimed the fine was evidence that the Scottish Conservatives had been accepting "dark money" - donations that are disguised in order to avoid transparency.

A separate investigation is being carried out into the Scottish Unionist Association Trust (SUAT), which made donations totalling £318,876 to the election campaigns of several Tory politicians, including Scottish Secretary David Mundell, between 2001 and 2018.

The SUAT has said the money was the "historic proceeds of tombolas and raffles throughout the west of Scotland going back 50 years" and was "in no way dark money".

And Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson told BBC Scotland last week that the SUAT is registered with the Electoral Commission and that there was "utter transparency" about where the money comes from".