BNP leader Nick Griffin faces being axed as a Euro MP as he fights to avoid bankruptcy over his party’s soaring cash crisis.
He is among top officials thought to be personally liable for the racist group’s £700,000 debts – which it admits it cannot pay.
Anyone made bankrupt is legally barred from being an MP or Euro MP.
The BNP’s money woes were laid bare by ex-chief fundraiser James Dowson in a letter seen by the Mirror.
Mr Dowson told North-East printers who produced its newsletter that the finances were like “a shipwreck”
He added: “Cash is in very short supply… [it is] impossible for the BNP and persons associated with it to pay outstanding bills in anything like a normal timescale, if indeed at all.” The “very grave” crisis meant it could only pay 20% of what it owed, he added.
Its money problems have been made worse by having to settle a legal row after illegally using Marmite in an ad and the cost of fighting the Equality and Human Rights Commission over its whites-only admission rules.
Meanwhile, electoral chiefs are still probing its 2008 accounts as they contain gaps that breach the law.
The BNP’s debt meltdown comes amid a spate of defections and expulsions.
Mr Dowson and media officer Paul Golding have left while campaigns chief Eddy Butler and London Assembly member Richard Barnbrook were recently expelled.
Mr Griffin was not responding to our requests for a comment last night.
, 3/11/2010