Douglas East MHK candidate Michael Josem has refused to say who is bankrolling his Manx Taxpayers Alliance (MTA) organisation.

Mr Josem founded the political action group alongside Antony Nicholls, who is listed as the second director - as it is registered as a Manx limited company.

It describes itself as the ’The grassroots Manx campaign for taxes to be low, fair and simple, for government transparency and great value for money for taxpayers.’

He cited data protection law as being the reason why he could not disclose the identity of any donors to the organisation.

However, he could confirm that it had not received any donations from the UK, and that it had no association with the UK Taxpayers Alliance, which is a political pressure group.

Allegations had arisen on social media that Mr Josem, as a Liberal Vannin candidate who stood unsuccessfully in last year’s Douglas South by-election, might be receiving funding from Conservative-leaning donors.

Mr Josem, who described himself as ’incredibly transparent’ in a recent tweet, said: ’Someone has anonymously written a bunch of wrong and offensive things on the internet, interspersed with real names and things they found on Google.

’It shows that the Manx TaxPayers’ Alliance is having an effect, with our careful documentation of budget blowouts at Bus Vannin, Douglas Council wasting £24,000 on a losing battle to recoup £3,500 from a worker, and the wasting of taxpayer money on the [Steam Packet] Liverpool landing stage.’

Responding to criticism that as a candidate he should strive for transparency, Mr Josem pointed to his full employment history which he lists on his personal website.

The MTA is not a member organisation, but has more than 400 online followers.

It has sought to expose what it sees as government wastage of public funds.

Douglas East so far has the most number of candidates announced. The others are: Joney Faragher, Amanda Walker, Peter Gilmour, Clare Barber, Jon Joughin and Christine Urquart.