The Electoral Commission has fined influential but controversial pro-independence blogger, Wings Over Scotland £750 for failing to file complete spending returns for last year’s referendum.
The elections watchdog said Stuart Campbell, who runs the website from his home in Bath, south-west England, failed to submit the necessary invoices and receipts after registering as an official yes campaigner during last year’s independence referendum.
Campbell’s referendum returns have been under investigation by the Crown Office and Electoral Commission since February, as one of a handful of campaign groups that have fallen foul of strict referendum spending rules, including the official no campaign, Better Together.
In September, the commission issued a heavier £1,500 fine against Labour for Independence – a yes campaign group that relied heavily on Scottish National party activists – for failing to file its spending returns in time.
No decision on Better Together’s breach, thought to focus on missing receipts for rail travel, has yet been issued.
A spokeswoman for the commission said in Wings Over Scotland’s case it “considered that, in accordance with its enforcement policy, a sanction was appropriate in this case.
She added: “Wings Over Scotland failed to deliver invoices and receipts in relation to campaign expenditure returns for the Scottish independence referendum. Some additional information was provided after the deadline. Providing invoices and receipts ensures that there is transparency in a campaigner’s spending return.”
Campbell told the Guardian: “We’re entitled to appeal to a county court over the fine, and will very likely do so. However, we welcome the confirmation that ‘the commission accepts that there was no intention to avoid transparency on your part’.”
Frequently combative with his opponents in his blog and on social media, Wings Over Scotland won a large fanbase among Scottish nationalists for publishing detailed critiques of pro-UK campaigns and the mainstream media.
Describing himself as a former Lib Dem voter, Campbell raised more than £330,000 through online crowdfunding – more than any other yes campaign achieved from such appeals – for his own opinion polling, pro-independence advertising, his Wee Blue Book of pro-independence analysis and economic data, and to pay himself a wage to run the site.
But he has also divided opinion in the yes movement, with senior figures in the Scottish Green party and radical left openly and privately critical of his aggressive style and views. His opponents accuse him of distorting data, of being unjustifiably abusive, and repeatedly misrepresenting their views and the media’s reporting.
