Contributions Made in Another Name

The disclosure system rests on a single assumption: that the name recorded against a contribution is the person whose money it was. The provision addressed here protects that assumption directly. It prohibits making a contribution in the name of another person, knowingly permitting one's name to be used to effect such a contribution, and knowingly accepting a contribution made by one person in the name of another.

Three Roles Covered by One Sentence

The structure of the provision is worth noticing, because it distributes liability across the whole transaction rather than concentrating it on the person who supplied the money. The true source is covered. So is the person who allowed a name to be used, which converts a participant who contributed nothing financially into a principal. So is the committee or other recipient that knowingly accepted the result, though the recipient's liability requires knowledge rather than mere receipt.

What the provision protects is the accuracy of the record, not the limit. A concealed source is prohibited whether or not the amount was within what that source could lawfully have given. The reason is structural: the disclosure obligations exist so that receipts can be traced to their origin, and an arrangement that defeats tracing damages the system even where every dollar involved was permissible in the hands of the person who supplied it.

What the Rule Reaches

The regulation states the prohibition and gives examples of arrangements it covers. Advancing money to another person so that the other may contribute is one. Reimbursing a person after that person has contributed is another, and the sequence makes no difference to the analysis. What the rule looks for is whether the person named as the contributor bore the economic burden, or whether that burden was shifted to someone who does not appear in the record.

The mechanism used to shift the burden is immaterial. Enforcement matters have addressed reimbursement through salary adjustments, bonuses, expense reimbursements, forgiven obligations and unrelated payments of equivalent value. Because the analysis is economic rather than formal, an arrangement is not removed from the provision by being papered as something else, and the absence of any explicit agreement does not defeat it where the pattern of payments supplies the connection.

Knowledge governs the recipient's position. A committee that receives a contribution from a person who is in fact a nominee for someone else, without any indication that this is so, has not knowingly accepted anything. The reports it filed are nonetheless inaccurate, and it will amend them once the true source is established. Where facts before the committee pointed to the arrangement, the analysis changes, and the committee's own inquiry record becomes the evidence on which the knowledge question is decided.

How Such Arrangements Become Visible

These matters are ordinarily identified from the record rather than from an admission. Reports are public and machine readable, which makes clustering detectable: several contributions of identical amount, on the same date, from persons sharing an employer or an address, arriving through a single transmittal. None of those features is unlawful on its own, and each has an innocent explanation, but together they identify a set of receipts worth examining.

The second source is the committee's own file. Best-efforts correspondence, deposit records, transmittal letters and the identifying information supplied for itemized receipts all sit in the file described in the registration and recordkeeping obligations. Where a committee's records show that identifying details for several contributors were supplied by one person, the file itself raises the question that the reports only suggested.

The third source is the payer side. Employer records, expense systems and bank records show the reimbursing payments, and those records are typically produced in response to a subpoena rather than volunteered. Because the underlying contributions are already public, the inquiry usually proceeds from the disclosed side toward the concealed one rather than the reverse.

Organizations sometimes create the exposure without intending an arrangement at all. An expense policy that reimburses employees for civic or professional costs without excluding political contributions can produce reimbursed contributions as a matter of routine administration. The provision does not require a scheme, only that the burden was shifted. Written policies excluding political contributions from reimbursable categories exist for that reason, and they are directed at the accounts payable function rather than at the government relations one.

Civil and Criminal Exposure

Civil enforcement proceeds through the ordinary sequence described in the complaint and enforcement process, and civil penalties for this provision are calculated on a distinct basis that takes the amount involved into account rather than applying the general schedule. Because liability reaches each participant, a single arrangement can produce several respondents, and conciliation is negotiated with each of them.

Criminal exposure is separate and is reserved for knowing and willful conduct involving amounts above a statutory threshold, with a higher tier above a larger threshold. Prosecutions in this area also commonly involve adjacent offenses: false statements arising from the identifying information supplied to the committee, and false entries in the reports the committee then filed in reliance on it. A committee that accepted without knowledge is not liable under the provision, but its reports were nonetheless inaccurate and are amended.

The lawful alternatives are all built on disclosure rather than concealment. A person who wishes to direct money to a candidate through an intermediary may do so where the arrangement is reported by both, as the earmarking rules require. A group raising money jointly for several committees may do so under a written agreement with allocation disclosed. What distinguishes each of these from the prohibited arrangement is that the record continues to name the person whose money it was, which is the fact the source rules in the prohibited sources framework and the ceilings in the limits and attribution rules both depend on.