Leave.EU and Arron Banks’ insurance firm fined £120,000 for illegal marketing

The Brexit campaign Leave.EU and Arron Banks’ firm Eldon Insurance have been fined a combined £120,000 for unlawful marketing.

The Information Commissioner issued the fines and said it would audit both organisations over their handling of personal data.

The ICO found the campaign and the insurer were “closely linked” and that customers’ details were illegally used to send marketing messages.

It said Leave.EU, of which Bank is a co-founder, used Eldon Insurance customers’ personal information to send close to 300,000 political marketing messages, resulting in a fine of £15,000.

The insurers also sent more than one million emails to Leave.EU subscribers “without sufficient consent”, with the ICO handing out a £45,000 fine to the campaign and £60,000 fine to Eldon Insurance.

Information commissioner Elizabeth Denham said: “It is deeply concerning that sensitive personal data gathered for political purposes was later used for insurance purposes; and vice versa. It should never happened.”

Denham said both organisations had insisted improvements had been made but that the ICO would conduct audits on how they use customers’ person information.

After the ICO gave notice of the fines in November, Banks defended himself on Twitter.

He said: “Gosh we communicated with our supporters and offered them a ten per cent Brexit discount after the vote! So what?”

The ICO will now have access to the Leave.EU’s and Eldon’s joint offices, staff and documentation, and warned it was criminal offence to obstruct its audit.

British millionaire and political donor Banks has also been referred to the National Crime Agency (NCA) by the Electoral Commission for his role in the Brexit referendum in 2016.

The elections watchdog said it had "reasonable grounds" to suspect that Banks was not the true source of £8m in loans received by Better for the Country, the parent organisation that ran Banks' controversial Leave.EU campaign.