Dirty money risks polluting our politics. Over the last three years, Spotlight has monitored several court cases involving prominent political donors alleged to be associated with corruption or money laundering.
We have worked closely with parliamentarians through briefings to bring attention to serious gaps in the current framework for protecting UK political finance from dirty money and foreign influence. This has included working with Peers to bring forward an amendment to legislation that would require parties to do proper checks on donations to ensure they are not from foreign parties or governments. We secured coverage in the Guardian, Politico and Independent to highlight the need for this amendment.
We have advocated robustly, through briefings, press commentary and submissions, for political parties to do proper checks on donations and to understand where the money is ultimately coming from. This has included developing a ‘know your donor’ policy with experts. Such a reform was supported in an editorial in The Times, following our engagement, and our comment piece in Metro laid out the importance of such reforms in light of upcoming elections in the UK.
This case study is taken from our 2022-23 Impact Report which can be downloaded here.
