The story so far: Alan Johnson runs for Labour Deputy Leader. His campaign receives a donation in the name of someone who is on the electoral register and eligible to vote. It then turns out the donor was really passing on money from someone else (brother-in-law). This isn’t allowed because (as with the David Abrahams affair) the original source of the money must be named.

Alan Johnson’s defence? His team checked the person who handed over the money, and there was no way they could have known the money was really coming from someone else.

As initial explanations in other donation sagas have turned out not to be the full story, it is only reasonable for the Electoral Commission to be investigating as today’s Sunday Mirror reports:

Ahmed Yar Mohammed, treasurer of Croydon Central Labour Party, paid £3,334 through Waseem Siddiqui, 50, who is in Britain on a student visa.

Croydon is somewhere where there are other questions over donation declarations. But notice those words “treasurer of Croydon Central Labour Party”.

He should therefore perhaps have seen the Labour Party’s Treasurers’ Handbook (latest edition, 2005), which says on p.29:

If a person gives another person money, which the second person donates, the donation is from the first person: the second person is disregarded as an agent.

and

So donors cannot hide behind “fronts”

If he missed both of those, perhaps he should have seen the “Donations and Loans Briefing: December 2007” from the Compliance Unit. Its contents have not been published outside the Labour Party previously and it says on p.2:

Where someone acts as an agent for the donor, the agent is required to pass on the full details of the original donor at the time the donation is made.

From the media reports so far, it would appear that Ahmed Yar Mohammed and his brother-in-law didn’t pass on such information. If that’s the case, then the obvious question is: how did they manage to overlook the briefing material sent out on at least two occassions by the Labour Party to all their local party treasurers? (Note: the story broke in late January rather than, say, just after the December update was sent out).