money that could be of interest to the feds. i think there is a good chance that law enforcement in new york city would be interested in taking a further look at this. did the dup do enough homework into the financial background of their biggest donor? as official enquiries into allegations of cheating by vote leave continue, we offer new insight into how they worked together with the dup in the referendum. as official enquiries into allegations of cheating by vote leave continue, we offer new insight into how they worked together with the dup in the referendum. the implication is that it's just a sham, that they are a front for in fact the intentions and the dealings of vote leave. two years on from the eu referendum

and the result remains bitterly contested. these protesters on the streets of london on saturday were demanding another vote. the will of the people is to have a proper, informed referendum, where we know what brexit deal means. for some, it's because they say the original result is tainted by cheating. people like christopher wiley, a former leave supporter. his allegations about vote leave and how he says they cheated have been the subject of parliamentary enquiries.

if we allow cheating in our democratic process, and we allow this amount, what about next time? what about the time after that? one of the reasons i supported leave was because i believe in the british constitutional settlement and i believe in british law and british sovereignty. and undermining the constitutional settlement of this country by cheating in a referendum that's going to change the fundamental law of that country is something that i cannot support. take back control was the brexit slogan, and control at westminster now rests with the dup. their votes keep the government in power and they expect the final say on any brexit deal. the brexit campaign brought profile and money on a scale the party had never seen before. money that allowed them to buy several pages of advertising wrapped around the cover of london's top freesheet. this is what announced the dup as major national players in the european referendum — a four—page wraparound advertisement in the metro.

and it didn't come cheap. at home in northern ireland, stormont is now mothballed. but the dup still retains a big say over what happens here by virtue of its new grip on national power. spotlight‘s metro replicates may look convincing but the real thing cost the dup £280,000 - five times what they spent in the previous general election — and was designed to convince london's electorate to vote leave. with this london—centric advert, it looked like the dup were in someone else‘s territory. but were they also working to someone else‘s plan? a form of co—ordination which, if not declared, is not allowed under electoral law.

ann watt is the head of the electoral commission in northern ireland. the rules are there to avoid people having an edge by spending more money than their opponents. the rules are there to limit spending so that the competition, the contest between the different parties or campaigners is fair. that's what the rules are for. the electoral commission is already investigating vote leave for potentially breaking its spending limit with other groups in the eu referendum. the accusation is that it worked in a common plan with those groups to hide overspending. leading london qc gavin millar is an expert on electoral law. the question is, whose campaigning is it in reality? that's the bottom line. so the law required that you had to have an open

and transparent system whereby the different parties acting in concert had to, when they made their declarations as to their spending and the fact that they had stayed within their spending limit, be honest about participating in common plan expenses so that you couldn't hide expenses that were in fact yours by them appearing to the electoral commission on the declaration of another party, and if they had been on yours would have taken you over the limit. the unusual metro ad raised suspicions of there also being a common plan between the dup and vote leave because it was targeted outside of northern ireland and the money was spent in the last

days of the campaign when vote leave had reached its spending limit. but the dup isn't under investigation and vote leave has insisted there was no common plan. so, where did the money for northern ireland's biggest ever political donation come from? the dup said it came from an organisation called the constitutional research council, or crc. we received, i think, £435,000 from the crc. of that, we spent over £105,000 in the eu referendum campaign. but it's hard to find out what the crc is. it's supposed to be based in scotland and funded by businesspeople who support the union. i know lots of people in scotland and i know many of the pro—union concerned scottish businesspeople. no—one i know and no—one i have ever met knows anything about the crc. the crc are probably the most secretive organisation in british politics. there's something that stinks about this whole set—up. it stinks to high heaven. but the crc‘s only named member,

richard cook, isn't unknown. richard elliot cook, 15,567. a former vice—chairman of the conservatives in scotland, he lost tojim murphy in two westminster elections. i've known richard cook for many years. we've known one another through politics, him as a conservative candidate, me as a labour candidate. he can be personable. he's very right wing. i mean, there's no populist cause that he doesn't enthusiastically back. there's no daily mail headline that he has never intuitively felt connected to. but it was a different newspaper, not the daily mail, where i've discovered richard cook had a much bigger connection. so, here is the metro ad. it clearly says "dup" at the top and at the bottom, it has the legal imprint "promoted byjm donaldson "on behalf of the democratic unionist party."

but i've discovered that this ad wasn't booked by jeffrey donaldson, or indeed anyone at the dup. it was booked by richard cook. so, let's have a look at this. here we have the dup. they were connected to vote leave. and here we have richard cook. he was connected to the dup. but richard cook appears to be directing dup spending. is that against the rules? potentially, yes. what was the actual sequence of events and the co—ordination that led to that rather odd outcome with a northern ireland political party booking a piece of publicity, a campaign document that would be available to the public that would go out in another part of the uk, in london, using money given to

it by an unincorporated association in scotland and apparently arranged with the involvement of the person in control of that? that's a kind of weird mix of facts the like of which i haven't come across before. the electoral commission didn't know of richard cook's role in the metro ad, and said it would investigate. i wasn't aware of that and if that's a piece of evidence that you or someone else wants to raise with the electoral commission then we can certainly look at that. the dup were a registered campaigner in the referendum. that entitled them to campaign across the whole of the uk, and they did that in purchasing various things, including the metro ad that you mentioned. if you have particular evidence about some kind of co—ordination with someone else then we'd be very happy to look at that. the dup said the party had authorised and directed spending.

when we put it to richard cook that he booked the ad, he replied that there had been no breach of electoral law. bagpipes play evidence of the dup's second biggest bagpipes play evidence of the dup‘s second biggest referendum expense appeared again outside of northern ireland, this time in scotland. so, i came into the station, i was on my way home and right outside there were these two guys holding big red leave placards and giving out leaflets for the leave campaign, encouraging people to vote leave. journalist adam ramsay was intrigued. these looked like vote leave posters, except with the addition of the word "to". on closer inspection, it turned out it was dup material in edinburgh. this was a week before the referendum, it was perfectly normal to see campaigners, but what was very strange was that here in edinburgh, in scotland, there were materials that had been funded by or at least money had been funnelled through a small party in northern ireland.

they were two guys, who were regular sort of leave campaign volunteers. they didn't seem to have any particular connection to the dup. they'd just got involved in the edinburgh leave campaign group and presumably someone had given them these placards. we searched the bbc news archives and uncovered this footage. it backs up adam ramsay's account. the same two volunteers were filmed handing out official vote leave material a few days before adam's snap. spot the difference — dup or vote leave? you have to look very closely to work it out. is this evidence of vote leave and dup working together? if it is undeclared common plan expenditure, as we know, that could mean vote leave exceeded its spending limit, and that could be against the law. the placards in scotland

were ordered from a company here in the beautiful mediaeval market town of ely in cambridgeshire, with its famous cathedral. i wanted to know why vote leave, the dup and other leave campaigns had spent a combined total of £800,000 on this same company, soopa doopa, that provides branded t—shirts and the like. it seemed a bit of a coincidence that all these separate groups spent money with the same company. but i wasn't getting any answers on the phone. good morning, would gavin be available? it's jim fitzpatrick at the bbc. i was speaking to him last week. i just wanted to follow up with him. so, i decided to pay a visit to a residential address listed as the company offices. well, it turns out the address is the home of managing director of soopa doopa jake scott—paul,

and he was at home when i knocked the door. he told me that the company had simply been lucky to win £800,000 in business. he couldn't remember who he dealt with at the dup but he said he didn't know the name richard cook. he wasn't the only supplier to forget details about a big customer, namely the dup. dup vote to leave? dup, we had a number of contacts. i don't remember. the dup was a lot smaller, so we had a lot less interaction, but i can get that for you. i don't recall off the top of my head, but i can certainly get that for you and provide it after. the person who can't remember his dup contact isjeff silvester. he is head of a canadian company called aggregateiq, or aiq, who handled vote leave‘s social media advertising in the referendum. his firm also earned

£32,000 from the dup in the last two days of the campaign, when vote leave had reached its limit. his company is under investigation in the uk and canada. the politicians suspect he was part of a common plan to help vote leave overspend. were you ever a part of or involved in co—ordinating or organising multiple clients‘ ads for the same or similar campaign? yes or no? no, i don't believe so. thank you. ijust would say, as the chair of this committee, i know, i think we are all saying the same thing and we're all concerned, something doesn't smell right here. and ijust would challenge aiq to do the right thing. christopher wiley, a former friend and associate, spoke tojeff silvester after the referendum. he says he asked him directly how he'd won the business,

including that from the dup. what they told me when i asked them about it was, you know, "how were these different campaigns... how did they find you? "you don't have a website "and all of a sudden you're now the key player in all of these "different campaigns that are "theoretically supposed to be separate." and they asked me, "oh, do you mean the dup?" and i said... dup? the dup. so i said, "no, the d—u—p. it's not the dup, it's the..." and they at the time didn't seem to even know exactly what the "dup" was. it was just another client that was passed to them. so they told me that they were introduced, that vote leave was looking for ways of putting in more money into the operation that they were running and the dup was an efficient vehicle to do that. christopher wiley says he was told by aiq about the common plan spending, and it included the dup‘s money. my understanding

from what they told me was that they were introduced by vote leave, it's not like the dup knew who they were ahead of time, and that moneyjust went into the same targeting operation that all the other campaigns were putting money into as well. lawmakers have taken a keen interest in wiley‘s claims and aiq's role in alleged wrongdoing. when i went and actually spoke to aggregateiq... and they conceded to me, and this is a verbatim quote which i, you know... and i stand by, you know, i rememberjeff silvester tell me this. it was, quote, "totally illegal". jeff silvester disputes this account. he told spotlight all dup work had been kept separate from vote leave, and he obeyed the law. and he strongly rejected any suggested improper use of data. though wiley‘s accusations in relation to the facebook

data scandal have forced an apology from the founder, mark zuckerberg. and it was my mistake and i'm sorry. and wiley‘s testimony has been backed by this independent expert, chris vickery, who got an unexpected insight into what aiq was up to when the company left a door open to its inner workings online. it hit me that, oh, my god, this is the repository of where these tools are that aggregateiq are using, the source code behind these scripts. and i immediately understood the gravity of the situation and thought, "i need to document this." in effect, to an expert like chris vickery, it was like having a big window into the inner workings of the company. he says it allowed him to see what aiq had been doing. spotlight asked chris vickery to examine the code for evidence of the dup referendum work. although we can't be certain that

code for all clients was exposed, there was plenty of evidence of what aiq did for vote leave. but when it came to the supposedly separate dup referendum work, he couldn't find any. i would expect to see something here, a folder, a reference to it somewhere in the developer comments, something like that, but ijust don't see it. and you see lots of references to what work has been done generally for vote leave. yeah, vote leave, change britain, veterans for britain, i see plenty of references to all of those campaigns, yes. but not the dup? nope. so, is this more evidence of a common plan between the dup and vote leave? vote leave, the dup and aiq all deny any common plan. but spotlight can reveal who the aiq boss, jeff silvester, says he worked with at the dup. it's belfast councillor lee reynolds. however, there's potentially a big problem with this.

and this is it — the person jeff silvester says he dealt with in the dup during the referendum was, in fact, the director of vote leave in northern ireland. dup group leader on the council lee reynolds was on secondment to vote leave for the campaign. he shouldn't have been directing dup spending. the admission from silvester is potentially a big one. it's extremely significant because this is supposedly money that's being spent at arm's length of their own volition and choice by the dup. you put the same person in the driving seat with two hats

on — one is the dup hat and one is the vote leave hat in northern ireland — then the implication is the dup‘s dealings with aggregateiq are purely nominal, that it's just a sham, that they're a front for, in fact, the intentions and the dealings of vote leave. so, silvester‘s admission appears to complete the triangle of co—ordination. cook donates... ..the dup spends... ..and vote leave... ..directs. it pulls vote leave, and the organisation of the vote leave campaign in northern ireland, firmly into the activities of the dup, which are being funded by cook's money. i mean, that is an obvious triangulation of interests. we asked lee reynolds and the dup to respond to this apparent admission of co—ordination. the dup said work with aiq was directed by the party,

but didn't say by whom. lee reynolds said he did not direct dup activities with aiq while he worked for vote leave. whether there was a common plan that helped vote leave exceed its spending limit is not the only question spotlight‘s investigation has raised. electoral guidelines are clear on the obligation on parties to check donations. in a recent interview with investigative news website source material, the dup treasurer admitted that he knew nothing about his biggest donor, cook's constitutional research council. he said it was up to the electoral commission to do the checks. but the electoral commission said the rules are clear — treasurers must check to make sure money isn't foreign and is permissible. well, the primary responsibility

in the law for making sure donations are allowed lies with the treasurer of the political party. the treasurer of the party needs to be satisfied that they know that the donor was the true source of the money that came to them. it was a record donation in the most important vote in generations. if the dup had asked more questions, would they have accepted the money? important questions about richard cook and his own finances. cheering. i wanted to be here because i think richard cook would make an excellent member of parliament and i want you to do everything you can to get him elected. there was intense interest in richard cook during the 2010 general election because the tory candidate was widely — but wrongly — tipped to unseat labour leader in scotland jim murphy.

he remembers his opponent making much of his apparent environmental credentials. well, think back to 2010. this was david cameron trying to detoxify the tory party and the emblematic way of doing that was about hugging a husky, proving the environmental credentials, "vote blue, get green" and all that sort of malarkey. i remember the hustings in a sort of draughty church back in 2010 when richard cook was standing against me. he really spoke with some degree of detail about his credentials because he was involved in the management of a waste management company and a recycling company. so, i'm off to check out richard cook's former company offices in a business park on the outskirts of glasgow. he was a founding director of a firm called ddr recycling. it went out of business,

owing taxpayers about £150,000. but its old website listed offices in the us and india, suggesting a global operation. on the ground, not many recall richard cook's company, but those that do paint a very different picture. i've spoken to a number of people around the business park. some of them do remember ddr recycling, but it never gave the impression of being a large, international organisation. in fact, apparently, it had the smallest office in the building behind me. but i'm given a phone number of someone who may know a bit more. hello, jim fitzpatrick here, from the bbc. it turns out this person has deep concerns about the nature of business conducted at cook's old firm and a boatload of evidence to share. so do you still have the material, then? how would you feel about us popping down to see you? ok, thank you.

bye— bye. this is what a document dump literally looks like. but these documents from ddr recycling have been saved from landfill. after spending weeks going through this material, i was able to build a picture of how richard cook's former company made its money. as a candidate, richard cook joked that his experience in the waste management industry made him a glorified binman. the description is partly true. richard cook seemed to be dumping illegal waste on an industrial and international scale. the documents i have from cook's own files are full of detail.

one early case seems to illustrate the general method. it begins in sheffield, where cook arranged the collection of what's described as rubber material. this is the site of a former recycling plant. a large part of the rubber began its lengthyjourney here. the material was loaded into container lorries... ..and transported hundreds of miles south to the port of felixstowe, where the containers were loaded for export. i've got one of the key shipping documents and what it tells me is that richard cook claimed he was shipping something called hard rubber crumb from here in felixstowe all the way to cochin in india.

the problem was richard cook wasn't shipping hard rubber crumb. he was shipping tyre waste. sending that to india was illegal. it was breaking the law that made it profitable. well, when you're looking at waste crime, it normally always comes down to money. in the case of tyres, it's actually been illegal to dispose of them in landfill since 2006, so the primary motivation is going to be money. you can undercut legitimate sellers by sending waste abroad. ten containers were impounded. cook tried to rectify things by sending what he claimed to be a lab report verifying the material was legal, but the indian authorities weren't fooled. his test was a fake. how do we know that it's fake? well, this grapevine networking uk limited that purportedly tested the material wasn't a testing agency. it was a recruitment company owned by his fellow directors

that has since also gone bust. and what is remarkable is that richard cook's professed environmental credentials turn out to be nothing more than, potentially, an international fly—tipper. the waste was eventually taken by the shipping company to malaysia for disposal. cook had left them with a bill totalling more than $1 million. we put a series of questions to richard cook and he replied through his lawyers, saying he had ceased day—to—day activities with and on behalf of the company in 2009. but we have e—mails, some well into 2011, where cook is clearly active on company business. and cook remained a director and shareholder of the company until 2014. the indian shipment was only one of many over several years. shipments which secret

internal documents suggest were yielding big profits, and it wasn't the only questionable source of income for the man behind the dup‘s biggest future donation. kiev, a city of 5 million people and capital of ukraine. this city was home to the revolution that rid ukraine of its pro—russian government in 2014. but the country is still fighting russia in the east, and fighting a deep legacy of corruption and organised crime. and this is where richard cook's company signed an $80 million contract. the deal, which cook's company signed in 2013 when the old pro—russian regime was still in power, is supposed to be for shipping vast

amounts of old rail tracks — 20,000 tons of them a month for a year. it seems like an awful lot of railway. i'm meeting localjournalist sviatoslav yurash. hi, sviatoslav? he's going to help me while on the ground in kiev. let's get this gear in here. he has a wealth of local knowledge, which should prove useful. we're off to meet someone who's taken a close look at this contract for us. she's a specialist in corruption. daria kaleniuk heads up ukraine's anti—corruption action centre, antac.

she thinks the contract doesn't ring true because the company in ukraine supposed to be supplying millions‘ worth of used rails has no accounts filed that she can see. the first thing is that i think that this is the phantom company. it is registered, actually, at the address nearby where i live, so it's a residential place. this company is not known in ukraine at all, so it doesn't produce anything, erm, it doesn't... it's not known that it is trading rails or used rails or anything else. she says it fits a pattern of other deals she's examined, dating from the time of the former pro—russian regime in ukraine. all that indicates that, most likely, it's one of many fictitious contracts, which was used to present

to the bank as their confirmation that there is a real business, but behind this real business, there was just attempts to conceal the illicit origin of money. daria's suspicions about the contract are supported by sources at the state railway company. they tell us they weren't in the business of selling used railway track, and certainly not $80 million worth. time to phone the person listed on the $80 million contract. automated message we'll go and knock on the door. indeed. the number is inactive, so we head for the listed address. it's clearly a residential area. old tower blocks built in the soviet era. but the person named

and even the address of the building is elusive. we can't find the person named on the contract, but there are also bank details to check. establishing that the bank account details are correct might lead us to the person cook's company was in business with, so we pay a visit to the state—owned bank. when we come outside and try to film, we run into problems. the bank has an issue with us filming, looking in the door with the sign, so we're just going to take the camera round the corner and film there. get out of their hair. what we wanted to know was if the details i had were indeed real. when we went to the bank to check, the only way they would verify was if we made a small deposit,

so we chose the smallest amount we could, about $6 or $7, and it turns out the account is real, it's active, and these people could still be in business. the few dollars i've deposited is 175 hryvnia in local currency, as my receipt shows. but it also gives me other details. with the company tax code and some more calls, i discover who is behind the operation. he even featured on this bbc investigation back in 2001... reporter: ...to make an illicit profit... ..because of a massive food scam that threatened europe's organic industry. it's a fraud which could have huge implications for the whole organic system. the man at the centre is hans ernst bastian, a berlin—based grain trader. bastian was sentenced to eight years in jail in germany for the fraud, but must have since moved to ukraine. my trip to kiev has revealed that the person the dup took £435,000 from

for the eu referendum was a director of a company that had signed a multi—million dollar deal with a convicted german fraudster in ukraine. richard cook denied any knowledge of the contract. i've got some notes here on which i have written each of the multi—million dollar contract values and where they're located, and i'm going to place them on the map. australia, mexico, malaysia, korea, ukraine, russia and more. the total face value of these contracts is well in excess of $1 billion. because the contracts are in dollars, any money would pass through new york and be subject to us law, so i've asked a us expert

with a famous track record to take a look. my name isjordan belfort. the year i turned 26, i made $49 million, which really pissed me off because it was three shy of a million a week. he didn't star in the hit movie, but in real life, gregory coleman is the fbi special agent who caught the wolf of wall street, and the contracts we showed him from richard cook's company caught his interest. we have contracts for companies in the middle east, for syria, iraq, iran, russia, all places that require additional higher—level scrutiny by financial institutions. gregory coleman, now retired from the fbi, examined the various documents in detail. spelling mistakes, the locations, the fixed amounts, the cutting and pasting — not hard evidence, but all flags that raised concern. the likelihood of these documents being entirely legitimate,

in my opinion, from what i've seen as my experience as an fbi agent, is probably not very high, because, really, in financial crimes, especially when you're trying to mix in your illicit business, you want to make it look real. the fbi has the authority, but would it have any interest in looking into this? could we investigate this here in the us? yes. do i think, for example, that the fbi in new york would be interested in this? well, certainly if these amounts of money are being moved, yes. i think there is a good chance that law enforcement in new york city would be interested in taking a further look at this and possibly opening something up. we have no way of knowing if any potentially tainted money made its way into richard cook's donation. but nor do we have any way of knowing that it didn't, because when richard cook turned up

with a lot of money for the dup, searching questions were not asked. treasurer gregory campbell said it wasn't up to him to find out who was behind the crc donation. he said checking is the electoral commission's job, not his. but something was amiss with the crc from the very beginning. a small thing, perhaps, but enough to merit a fine from the electoral commission.

any unincorporated association like the crc which donates more than £25,000 in a single year, must be registered with the electoral commission. the crc wasn't. spotlight understands the crc was fined £6,000 because it wasn't registered with the electoral commission as required. and because its donation was to a northern ireland party, where the crc got its money remains secret. the electoral commission had urged the government to make all donations since 2014 fully transparent, but the government resisted. we were very

disappointed about that. our expectation had been that transparency would be from january 2014 onwards, and we think it's disappointing for the public that they don't get to see that information. and it means that any big donations recently, including the 2016 eu referendum campaign, remain shrouded in secrecy? yes, that's right, those donations have to be reported to the electoral commission under the law, so the donations are reported to us, but we're not allowed to make them public. we asked the dup to outline what due diligence they had conducted on mr cook and the crc. the party replied that it met all legal obligations relating to the donation and said it rejected all assertions to the contrary. spotlight‘s investigation has raised questions around how the dup and vote leave worked

together in the referendum, and if their co—ordination amounted to an undeclared common plan that breached electoral law. our investigation into the crc's richard cook has discovered a trail of illegal activity, falsehood and foreign money. gavin miller believes the electoral commission needs to open a full investigation and potentially seek help from the courts and police. it has to investigate further. it has to compel answers from those involved, which it has powers to do. if necessary, it needs to obtain court orders compelling answers from people involved and disclosure of information. is there enough here to warrant that? there is more than enough here to warrant that, and they can make very detailed and specific demands

of vote leave, the dup, mr cook and his organisation, to forward them and disclose to them documentation, give them access to records, including financial records, and to answer their questions. and they can back those up with court orders. if they collect evidence and information in the course of that further investigation that warrants bringing in the police, whether it's the psni or the police here, then they must do that, because there is too much at stake here to allow an incomplete or an unfinished investigation. two years on from the referendum and two days ahead of an important european summit to consider brexit, what's become known as the dup‘s "dark money" casts a long shadow.

no change is the tomorrow, is going to be another hot day across the uk. temperatures on thursday got up to 31 celsius and on friday, we will probably be approaching those values again. the risk of a downpour. we had won on thursday in tunbridge wells. further storms possibly developing on friday but not until later on. it's quite across the country, fairly warm. single figures across scotland. many of its staff a day on a sunny note, maybe some missed and some fluffing their weather clouds will develop and there will be a downpour on friday, it's probably going to be across the extreme south—east, kent and sussex. here are the highs. the outlook for

the weekend, scorching across the south and very warm in the north. that's it from me, good night. i'm sharanjit leyl in singapore. the headlines: racing against the rain — rescuers step up their efforts to get the trapped boys out of a flooded cave in thailand before the weather closes in. moving towards a trade war? a wide range of chinese exports will be hit by donald trump's 25% tariffs from today. i'm nuala mcgovern in london. also in the programme: police investigating the latest novichok poisoning case in britain say the victims probably picked up something used in the attack on sergei skripal four months ago.