A senior Ulster Unionist at the centre of the disciplinary move against three MPs who resigned the party whip is helping police inquiries into alleged electoral fraud.
Mr Alastair Patterson, the party's chief executive, is a former employee of the Electoral Office and was briefly in the public eye as the returning officer who announced Bobby Sands's victory in the 1981 Fermanagh-South Tyrone by-election.
Police are investigating alleged illegal activities in western counties of Northern Ireland between 1996 and 2001. It is thought the alleged offences relate to postal votes.
A former deputy returning officer at the Electoral Office, Mr Patterson is assisting inquiries into alleged forgery, corruption and false accounting.
The Electoral Office has made no comment, and the UUP has been referring inquiries about the allegations to the PSNI.
The party has been operating a trawl of influential members prepared to sit on a disciplinary committee to deal with the cases of Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, Mr David Burnside and the Rev Martin Smyth.
They quit the whip at Westminster to oppose Mr David Trimble's policy on the Belfast Agreement. They want the UUP to reject outright the Joint Declaration, published by Dublin and London in May.
The two governments hope the declaration will map the course to kick-starting the stalled political process and implement all outstanding aspects of the agreement following so-called "acts of completion" by paramilitaries.
A disciplinary attempt was ruled unjust and without force or effect by the High Court in Belfast earlier this month.
In what was seen as a severe setback for Mr Trimble, Mr Justice Girvan ruled that the procedure followed in the disciplinary move against the three MPs was unfair.
A fresh move has begun and Mr Trimble wants a new disciplinary committee to be formed in line with the High Court's ruling.
Party officers meet this afternoon to run through a list of those approached with a view to forming a committee. Unionist sources have told The Irish Times that a committee comprising 12 members should be sufficient and that up to 20 members have been contacted.
It was alleged that members sympathetic to the rebel MPs had been lobbying those contacted, trying to persuade them not to take part in disciplinary action.
The civil war in the UUP has continued with a renewed attack on Mr Donaldson and his two Westminster colleagues by a former Stormont minister.
Mr Sam Foster, the former minister for the environment, has stepped up his criticism of Mr Donaldson, claiming he should not have used a platform at a Twelfth demonstration to criticise Mr Trimble.
Mr Donaldson, speaking at Hillsborough in his Lagan Valley constituency, told Orangemen that Mr Trimble's policies were splitting the party and damaging its electoral base. He called for a change of policy and an end to disciplinary moves.
However, Mr Foster said Mr Donaldson's behaviour was despicable.
"Jeffrey Donaldson and others had no right whatsoever to take advantage of the occasion on the biggest day of the Orange calendar year to venture into politics to attack David Trimble and his supporters," Mr Foster said.