As I’ve already said in an earlier post, some people in discussing donorgate, or donationsgate, of Abrahamsgate or whatever it is, are inclined to wild talk about whether the police might be investigating Theft Act offences like theft and http://www.lependart.com false accounting, or else money laundering offences. And I’ve dismissed that as wild talk.

But I think one more base does need to be covered in relation to the sorts of potential offences people might argue the police should be investigating.

There’s nothing to suggest from what we know that Abrahams, Kidd and Watt all in effect agreed to cover up the true source of the money knowing that it was unlawful for Watt to report Kidd as the donor. But if that did cheap oakleys turn out to be the truth, then there might have been a conspiracy under section 1 of the Criminal Law act 1977 to commit a PPERA offence. The essence of that offence is if one or more people agree to pursue a course of conduct that will necessarily involve one of them committing an offence – in this case, the commission by Peter Watt of an offence under section 65(4) of PPERA. It wouldn’t matter whether the three agreed all together, as it were, or whether they did so in a “chain”: Abrahams agreeing with Kidd, who then agreed with Watt.

I think it’s unlikely the facts here could actually disclose a conspiracy though – although Watt may potentially be liable for the PPERA offence if he can’t show due diligence under section 65(5) . That’s because as I’ve suggested above, for a conspiracy charge, section 1(2) of the 1977 Act would require that at least two of them knew that it would be unlawful to name Kidd as the donor to the Cheap Oakley Sunglasses Electoral Commission. Those two could then be charged.

But of course Peter Watt says he didn’t know that – so I think conspiracy is out, too.

The penalty, for what it’s worth, would be up to a year’s imprisonment or an unlimited fine – see section 3 of the 1977 Act.

2017-03-20T04:20:43+00:00Tags: , , |