CONCERNS have been raised that “dark money” is being used to fund adverts for Unionist Facebook groups, an investigation by The Ferret and The Free Press for today’s Sunday National has found.
A UK Government adviser and a senior figure at the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) think tank is among the figures behind the funding, along with two men who campaigned against Jeremy Corbyn through social media groups and who are now targeting the SNP.
The SNP described the Tories and dark money as “familiar partners”.
So-called dark money is funding raised for political campaigning through non-profit organisations that do not have to provide the identity of the source of those funds.
Adverts are now being funded for on Unionist and anti-SNP social media sites by Matthew Kilcoyne, a former Conservative Party activist and regular contributor to The Spectator and The Telegraph; James Bickerton, a former research assistant to Sarah Wollaston MP and journalist for The Express, and Brian Monteith, an anti-Corbyn former Conservative MSP and Brexit MEP.
Kilcoyne is deputy director at the ASI and has so far spent £6062 on Facebook and Instagram attack ads for the Businesses For The Union page.
Bickerton was involved with Campaign Against Corbynism (CAC), a group that spent more than £100,000 in the 2019 General Election campaign and found itself at the centre of a media investigation for its refusal to disclose details of finances. He has sponsored adverts worth £1055 for the anti-SNP Facebook page Divided We Fall.
Monteith has so far spent £8929 on adverts on the Facebook page for ThinkScotland, a website of which he is editor-in-chief. His ThinkScotland organisation does not reveal the source of its donors and is currently not registered as a third-party campaigner.
Kilcoyne, Bickerton and Monteith said that all protocols have been met.
Willie Sullivan, senior director of the Electoral Reform Society Scotland, called for “robust and modern campaign regulations”, adding: “We’ve seen all too often the power of dark money in our politics – exposing voters to misleading ads or targeting them with ‘independent’ campaigns bankrolled by political donors and party backers under another name.”
A spokesperson for the SNP said: “At a time when disinformation is rife within politics around the world, any connection between the Tories and anonymous Facebook groups should not be in place. The Tories and dark money are familiar partners.”
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