Ask the Electoral Commission to Confiscate the Money
Just got off the phone with the Electoral Commission. They are taking the "we can't comment on an ongoing police investigation" line (© T. Blair). They however offered to direct Guido to the relevant legislation, which statesForfeiture of donations made by impermissible or unidentifiable donors
(1) This section applies to any donation received by a registered party—
(a) which, ... the party are prohibited from accepting, but
(b) which has been accepted by the party.
(2) The court may, on an application made by the Commission, order the forfeiture by the party of an amount equal to the value of the donation.
(3) The standard of proof in proceedings on an application under this section shall be that applicable to civil proceedings.
(4) An order may be made under this section whether or not proceedings are brought against any person for an offence connected with the donation.
So all the Electoral Commission has to do is apply to a Court for an Order. Guido understands that the only circumstances where the Labour party could pay back the money to the donor would be if they had discovered the funds were impermissable within 30 days of them being accepted. It is too late for that...
The Electoral Commission works for you, it costs millions yet it rarely seems to show any teeth, If you think they should get on with it and confiscate the money forthwith, email vmarkos@electoralcommission.org.uk, Vera Markos - Head of Strategy and Secretary to the Commission asking them to do their statutory duty swiftly.
What are they waiting for? The Labour party admits the donations were impermissable.
The Electoral Commission works for you, it costs millions yet it rarely seems to show any teeth, If you think they should get on with it and confiscate the money forthwith, email vmarkos@electoralcommission.org.uk, Vera Markos - Head of Strategy and Secretary to the Commission asking them to do their statutory duty swiftly.
What are they waiting for? The Labour party admits the donations were impermissable.
93 comments:
But Labour have promised to pay the money back. What is twice £650,000?
Isn't it nice. At least we will discover how honourable our beloved leader actually is?
No Labour said they had already paid the money back.
Dear Vera,
Given that the rules and regulations regarding donations to political parties are very clear, and the Labour Party admits that laws have been broken, when will you be confiscating their ill-gotten gains?
Here is a link to the relevant legislation:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts2000/ukpga_20000041_en_7#pt4-ch2-pb2-l1g58
Forfeiture of donations made by impermissible or unidentifiable donors
(1) This section applies to any donation received by a registered party—
(a) which, ... the party are prohibited from accepting, but
(b) which has been accepted by the party.
(2) The court may, on an application made by the Commission, order the forfeiture by the party of an amount equal to the value of the donation.
(3) The standard of proof in proceedings on an application under this section shall be that applicable to civil proceedings.
(4) An order may be made under this section whether or not proceedings are brought against any person for an offence connected with the donation.
I look forward to your swift action in this matter.
Yours truly,
Co-Conspirator
This should also nail Wee Wendy
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/news/2007/12/05/nfunds105.xml
Guido, don't the funds confiscated by the Electoral Commission go to the Treasury Consolidated Fund? As Labour have a hard time differentiating between party and government at the best of times isn't it just a heads they win, tails we lose situation?
I'm betting Cameron may ask today if he can manoeuvre it in that the money has been surrendered to the Electoral Commission as forfeit and Brown will be like a moose in the headlights.
He might try the angle of using Purnell as clearly misleading to the public that it had been returned. I also hope he makes a point of saying "broke the law" and not broke the rules.
I hope he asks the short question "wheres the money" ...Brown will be stuttering all over the place. straw had to admit he didn't know where it was yesterday, which is amazing! Have they lost it in the post?!!
"I'm betting Cameron may ask today if he can manoeuvre it in that the money has been surrendered to the Electoral Commission as forfeit and Brown will be like a moose in the headlights."
The Speaker will probably stop this in it's tracks, the biased cnut
He needs putting up against the wall alonside the rest of the corrupt shysters
Evening Standrad headline just out - Livingstone aid in finacial probe / scandal.
Is there a single Labourite who ain't bent?
Just emailed 'our' Vera!
Wish I had the figures on me but ZanuLab are indeep dung ref their war kitty - Cameron made some good digs about it the other day - think Gay Gordon owes £28m, of which 6 or 8m needs to be repaid by April. No wonder he and his party have been thieving money afrom anywhere and everywhere, especially when there was an alection looming before Cyclops bottled it.
They need to forfeit the 700k and ALSO repay the donors, that puts them well over another million in the hole.
And this mathematical tripos moron was the Chancellor? He couldn't work a cheap chinese calculator.
Quentin Letts has laid into Gorbals 2 days running. The fat prick will be livid. Good.
It's because he's working class and Scottish.
Desperate and dishonest stuff from Hazel Blears on the Daily Politics.
This is a government in meltdown.
Why are Levy and his poodle Bliar not in this more? 1) It begun while Bliar was PM. 2) Bliar represented a north-east constituency. 3) Levy knew very well who Abrahams was.
The elite drinks party took place at a central London hotel four years ago. David Abrahams, the property developer who Labour politicians are now so keen not to know, entered a room already packed with Cabinet ministers and the party's most prized donors. Moments after arriving, Mr Abrahams was spotted across the crowded room by Lord Levy, the party's chief fundraiser. The Labour peer immediately left his group and swept over to greet Mr Abrahams like a long-lost friend with none other than Tony Blair in tow.
"How are things in the North East?" said a beaming Mr Blair, stretching out his right arm to shake Mr Abrahams warmly by the hand. As the three men chatted animatedly in a tight circle, other party bigwigs were tucking into the Champagne and canapés nearby. They included Hilary Armstrong, Labour's former chief whip, and Baroness Jay, who was destined to play a walk-on part in the Labour donation scandal that has rocked the party for the past week. Those who witnessed the greeting Mr Abrahams received were left in no doubt just how much the self-styled "very private man" meant to the party he has supported since he was 15 and donated to for the past 40 years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/02/ndonor202.xml
mitch - Well Gorbals thinks it's because he's a working class Scot. It's really because he is hopeless, under-qualified, over-promoted and would be out of his depth in a small puddle.
"just off the phone to" really is hackneyed
The way the legislation is worded implies it is not a donation that is or is not permissible, it is the donor.(And it would appear Abrahams is a permissible donor as he donated to Hilary Benn in his own name.)
Repeated offences have been made by accepting donations from undeclared agents. Even in the cases where donations were not technically accepted but were failed to be returned and/or recorded as returned within 30 days - ie the attempted £25k donation to Brown's leadership campaign fund. That makes the money proceeds of crime in my book. Can that still be confiscated?
What it doesn't appear to do is give grounds for forteiture by the Electoral Commission, unfortunately.
With the UKIP case the grounds for forfeiting were stronger - the donations were made by an impermissible donor as they were not on the electoral register. However, UKIP successfully argued this was a clerical error and the only money forfeitted was several thousand pounds donated after UKIP were aware the donor was impermissible.
It would change matters considerably if it were discovered Abrahams is an impermissible donor.
Good grief, Quentin Davies is still alive! I've just seen the slimy toad ask a suitably fawning question in the HoC.
On another topic, Nick Robinson is complaining of being unable to blog as he's feeling jaded thanks to the state of politics in this country. It's thanks to sycophants like him that things are as bad as they are - what a bell end! Reading between the lines he knows the game is up.
Neill really smashed the sacrificial ginger 'lamb' Hazel Blears, I think she is actually going to start crying after being asked about Anthony Bailey...
Blears is being totally humiliated and exposed as a liar by Andrew Neil. This shambolic and corrupt government is being found out more and more each day.
Gareth is correct.
Forfeiture applies to a breach of section 54 (1) - the donor is not a permissible donor, is anonymous or the party cannot ascertain his identity.
There has, it seems been no breach of 54(1). The real donor was permissible and the party apparently knew his identity.
There was a clear breach of the principal/agency disclosure requirements in section 54(6). But forfeiture does not apply to section 54(6).
Guido's point is therefore entirely misconceived.
Dan
SO what does happen when a political party goes bankrupt?
And I do mean in the financial sense not morally bankrupt which they have been for years.
Section 56 is the killer: If a party receives a donation which it should not have received, then it has to return it within 30 days, otherwise the party and its treasure are guilty of an offence. Here is the relevant bit:
"(2) If a registered party receives a donation which it is prohibited from accepting by virtue of section 54(1), or which it is decided that the party should for any other reason refuse, then—
(a) unless the donation falls within section 54(1)(b), the donation, or a payment of an equivalent amount, must be sent back to the person who made the donation or any person appearing to be acting on his behalf,
(b) if the donation falls within that provision, the required steps (as defined by section 57(1)) must be taken in relation to the donation,
within the period of 30 days beginning with the date when the donation is received by the party.
(3) Where—
(a) subsection (2)(a) applies in relation to a donation, and
(b) the donation is not dealt with in accordance with that provision,
the party and the treasurer of the party are each guilty of an offence."
Section 54(1)(b) applies to situatiions where the party doesn't know who the donor is (not where it thinks it knows, but is wrong, the best that could be said for the Abrahams donations). So there seems to have been an offence every time an impermissible loan was received and not returned within 30 days.
The culprits are the Labour Party and its treastuer. So that's Jack Dromey isn't it? Ignorance does not appear ot be a defence. The penalty is proscribed in Schedule 20: on summary conviction (i.e. in a Magistrate's Court, the maximum is 6 months or the statutory maximum fine (not sure what that is, but high) and on conviction by indictment (Crown Court/Old Baily) it is 1 year or a fine (no apparent limit).
A lawyer - go back to school and learn the difference between prescribed and proscribed.
One has to wonder if the HMRC will reclaim the tax releif that would have been given to the donors of the #650k?
I think they should make them repay those Abrahams donations to the people who gave them:
Ray Ruddick, Janet Kidd, John McCarthy and Janet Dunn should be repaid the money then they can make a personal decision whether to give it back to Abrahams
Watching PMQs just now I am in despair that the Prime Minister of this country is a deranged, lying, madman.
How the hell did we get saddled with this lunatic?
According to the BBC:
'Labour officials have been holding talks with the commission over how the money should be re-paid'
Latest item suggests the money will be forfeited.
Cameron singularly failed to trounce the PM today. Why is he still wasting his time on Des Browne when he should be going for Wendy Alexander's jugular ???
Just watched Prime Minister's Question's.
Should be renamed Prime Minister's Question's Question's
The tricycle riding giner minger's nose is growing an inch a minute after brillo's grilling on the daily politics.
Someone is lying and it is obviously the poison dwarf.
Brown Bean stuttering , whining and whimpering through another PMQ's performance. What a cringing and pathetic little man.
Brown Bean stuttering , whining and whimpering through another PMQ's performance. What a cringing and pathetic little man.
looks like Blogger's stuttering too now...
Ms Vera Markos
The Electoral Commission
Trevelyan House
Great Peter Street
London
SW1P 2HW
Fx: 020 7271 0505
05 December 2007
Dear Ms Markos
Given that the rules and regulations regarding donations to political parties are very clear, and the Labour Party admits that laws have been broken, when will you be confiscate the illegal funding?
Here is a link to the relevant legislation:
www.opsi.gov.uk
Forfeiture of donations made by impermissible or unidentifiable donors
(1) This section applies to any donation received by a registered party—
(a) which, ... the party are prohibited from accepting, but
(b) which has been accepted by the party.
(2) The court may, on an application made by the Commission, order the forfeiture by the party of an amount equal to the value of the donation.
(3) The standard of proof in proceedings on an application under this section shall be that applicable to civil proceedings.
(4) An order may be made under this section whether or not proceedings are brought against any person for an offence connected with the donation.
I look forward to your reply.
Yours sincerely
If it's supposed to be questions to the Prime Minister then why is Brown allowed by the Speaker to constantly address questions to Cameron?
Farcical!
Mitch 11:47 and others -
Just an aside, but i thought we'd agreed to call the people from north of the border Scotch or Scotchmen because it annoys them so much?
Can anyone suggest how the Labour Party runs up such huge debts, outside an election?
Apparently the Party received around 5 million between June and November. Yet the reported figure of indebtedness only appears to grow.
When is wee Duggie going to allay fears that there was a direct link between Abrahams and the decision to overturn the planning permission refusal? No doubt there are some bloggers, readers, party memebers and others who fear that he has taken his time to refute the suggestion that there was some quid pro quo. No doubt there are many NuLab posters who would like a clearly spelt out assurance that everything was above board over the planning permission at Durhamgate, and they too would be unable to sleep because wee Duggie has not yet clared his good name.
Or has that matter become sub judice for the MSM to ask some questions?
Brown did it again, he's now referring back to 1982 to accuse the Tories of stuff, would he like to go back and blame Thatcher for actually winning the election in 79 next.
All he could say is, well the tories did this in such and such. Does he not actually live in the present.
Dan @ 11.59,
You are a mong.
One aspect of this story which I find astonishing, and which really doesn't seem to have been picked up on in the media, is that one of the people used to channel the money was Mr Abrahams' solicitor.
Yes, his SOLICITOR.
Are we really supposed to believe that his solicitor didn't realise he was doing anything illegal? Surely that is a case for striking off by the Law Society, at the very least.
Guido, that's brilliant.
Don't bother actually reading the legislation, or anything. Just use the word "mong" and you win the argument.
Why didn't I think of that?
Dan
Well, considering it's almost Christmas, I think most people on this blog are being very cruel.
Instead -
Spare a thought for those less fortunate than yourselves
I would actually give Hazel Blears one. She looks like a reet dorty betch.
According to the DM 5/12/07
"The businessman at the centre of the row over illegal donations to the Labour party is unlikely to get any of his money back, it emerged today.
The £650,000 in undeclared donations David Abrahams gave to the party through third parties will be paid into government reserves, according to sources at the electoral commission.
The move will end speculation that the money would be returned to either Mr Abrahams or the intermediaries who paid the money on his behalf."
Presumably, there are a few unresolved issues surrounding the transfer of these funds, such as gift tax, money laundering, personation.....
Dan @ 1.14,
Mong.
"Gordon Broon Eats Hez Bawgies" is a very sick man indeed. (see 1.29PM above)
Feel free to copy and paste if you can't make it up yourselves... After all, the press do!
From: XXXXXXXX
Sent: 05 December 2007 14:03
To: 'vmarkos@electoralcommission.org.uk'
Subject:
Dear Mr Markos,
On 27 November, in a statement to the press, the Prime Minister described the circ. £670,000 donations accepted by the Labour Party from David Abrahams, via intermediaries, as “unlawful”. On 28 November, with regard to the donations he told the House of Commons that, “it is in everybody’s interests for action to be taken against something unjustifiable”.
I understand that, according to Part 58 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, the Electoral Commission may apply for a Court order to confiscate these donations which the Prime Minister has admitted are “unlawful”. Furthermore, I understand that Part 58 of the Act states that, “An order may be made under this section whether or not proceedings are brought against any person for an offence connected with the donation”.
Regardless of the ongoing police inquiry, therefore, will you now respond to the Prime Minister’s call for action against the Labour Party and exercise your statutory responsibilities by applying for such an order?
Yours sincerely,
James XXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
London XXXXXX
Englishman 1.01pm
"Just an aside, but i thought we'd agreed to call the people from north of the border Scotch or Scotchmen because it annoys them so much?"
an aside to your aside, you should not afford them the courtesy of a capital letter.... they are scotch or scotchmen.
Machiavelli - I am sure Vera will love being addressed as 'Mr'.
Vera? Oh yes... well, if that traffic cop caught speeding can be called Meredith, I don't see why Vera can't be a man too!
Forget all this contributions stuff. What we really want to know is did Vera inherit her mum Imelda's shoe collection?
The goverment in Latvia just announced it's resignation, you know for what: "Critics accused the prime minister of overstepping his powers and said the move was politically motivated, as Mr Loskutovs had been investigating possible campaign violations by Mr Kalvitis' People's Party."
Didn't anyone notice Anonymous 11:46? This one is going to be dynamite.
Never mind Donorgate - one of Red Ken's cronies is accused of syphoning off 2.5 MILLION.
Evening Standard:
"Lee Jasper, the Mayor's director of equalities and policing, is at the centre of a network of companies which have received large sums of public money from Mr Livingstone while appearing to do little or no work in return.
"An investigation by the Evening Standard reveals hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money is unaccounted for or has disappeared as a result of grants made through Mr Jasper."
Large sums of public money while appearing to do little or no work in return? Surely not.
Link to Kengate:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=499864&in_page_id=1770
Jesus Christ. Can't even run the accounts of a "not-for-profit" organisation and these tossers are running the country.
Can't we just short-circuit the whole process and tell the electoral commission we want an election and we want it now?
Looks like not-so-nice Mr Jasper is fucked LOL
and not before time IMO
The London Labour Party is like a cross between Soviet Communism under Stalin, the Black Panthers, Enron, al-qaeda, and the Irgun.
Beats me why any Londoners still vote for them.
Found the mention on DP cocerning a Mr Bailey (donor to Blears) interesting.
Meet Anthony Bailey, one of the most influential men you have never heard of. A key player in the world of Catholic and Middle East politics, Bailey's contacts book bulges with the names of the great and good. The Vatican and the House of Saud take his calls.
And now the powerful public relations guru, whose £500,000 donation to Labour was rejected in controversial circumstances two years ago, is to play a leading role advising the party on how to improve its relations with faith groups and restore its flagging finances.
Would the above be the Bailey in question? Anyone know?
Blears looked very uncomfortable!
Am having dig around anyway.
Take the money back, they shouldnt be allowed to keep it.
I think this scandal is worthy of the "-gate" suffix, but it shouldnt be overused.
None of you lot on here are fit to kiss Gordon's arse.
Dear Ms. Markos,
Firstly, I would like to comment on your fascinating and exotic name. Are you any relation to the Markos famiy of the Filipines? If so I suspect you know a thing or two about electoral fraud and such don't you!
But I digress. The point I would like to make is that by now you will have had various enquiries in regard to the current "Donorgate" scandal. This scandal might, in the fullness of time, result in criminal charges being brought against minor officials in the Labour Party. The scandal may involve your own department in considerable extra work. What I would like to suggest is that we try and find a way to short-circuit this process to everyone's satisfaction by finding some loophole by which the Electoral Commission calls an early election. Surely there must be some way by which this can be achieved? I was thinking that perhaps an official of the Electorla Commission might collect the Royal Sceptre from the House of Commons and post it back to the Queen. Please let me know what you think, but if you consider it a viable possibility please remember to use recorder delivery - we wouldn't want it going astray now would we?.
Yours faithfully,
Wolfgang Schadenfreude Esq.
sion simon @ 2.45 pm
But presumably you are and know all about it. Does this come from practical experience?
The osculum infame, is a noted part of medieval witchlore; the greeting given to the devil by his disciples.
http://altreligion.about.com/library/glossary/bldefosculum.htm
Tell us more, it could be interesting. Are you about to uncover yet another scandal?
That Livingstone story seems perfectly timed for the mayoral elections. I bet the Evening Standard have been sitting on it for quite a while just waiting for the precise time to exact their terrible revenge on Red Ken.
E-Mail sent, will wait with baited breath for the reply....
MS Word edit history snares Scottish Labour on donations
Alexander protested her ignorance of the donation in a statement yesterday, saying: "I reject any suggestion of intentional wrongdoing on my part."
As ever with political shenanigans, Alexander is clinging to the lifeline of plausible deniability over the affair, but her home computer could prove the opponents' star witness, reports say.
Labour spinners have stated that she only found out about Jersey businessman Paul Green's gift when the story broke last Thursday. According to the Sunday Herald however, her list of campaign donors reveals the cash was flagged as dodgy in the file back on 5 November - on a computer registered to her husband Brian Ashcroft, a University of Strathclyde professor.
Ashcroft's computer was indentified using the editing history in the properties of the Word document. Microsoft Office suite programs can have this "track changes" function switched on in a way that is invisible to the user, though it is simple to deactivate.
The list of donors, how much they contributed, and who solicited it had been annotated. Next to Green's entry someone had written "Permissible?".
From
The Register
Ha Ha
"sion simon said...
None of you lot on here are fit to kiss Gordon's arse."
Well that is your job.
sion simon said...
None of you lot on here are fit to kiss Gordon's arse.
The above is a joke. I am THE real Sion Simon. I have every admiration for Guido and all bloggers who expose political malpractice/wrongdoing.
....only joking...cum on Gordo...get ya nappy off.. slurp!
Why not get a petition going on the PM's website?
I am sure Guido can think of the relevant terms to use.
15million signatures should give them something to think about..
Great idea geezer466 4:07
Fact - When the scandal erupted last month, Gordon Brown promised (televised) to return the donations.
Ooooops - There is growing concern within Labour over how it can afford to repay the money, which has already been spent on campaigning.
Remedy - Bean pays out of own pocket. Afterall a promise is a promise.
We should leave these people alone. PM Gordon Brown is an honourable man and his cabinet are 100% honest and always tell the truth. I believe them all.
During PMQs I couldn't take my eyes of Wee Dougie, sat behind Broon. He's a dead ringer for Mr Burns in the Simpsons, does anyone know if there is a family connection.
to anon 5:54
Do you mean Smithers?
Top traffic cop caught speeding at 90mph ...gets 6 week ban. Harriet Harperson gets caught doing 99 and gets 4 day ban.
Is anyone surprised. Its easier to get 5,000 12 year old mothers abortions than it is to get rid of this foul government.
I met Lee Jasper once. Sat at the same table during dinner. Thought he was a horrible little man with the whiff of organised crime about him. Gauleiter Livingstone brought in many such noisome creatures to rape and pillage the London I once knew and loved. Please let's make sure Dear Old Boris gets the full skinny on this story to aid his campaign.
The problem is, the donation is not from an impermissible donor (Abrahams appears to be a UK registered voter), and the donor is not unidentifiable (it is Abrahams).
Sure enough the "agents" have committed an offence because they did not report the true donor, and Watt and anybody else who was aware of the concealment of Abrahams' identity has also committed an offense, but I can't see any provision that makes the donor an impermissible donor. The legislation was drafted on the assumption that the hidden donor would have been a foreign and thus impermissible donor. It doesn't contemplate that the hidden donor might be a permissible donor.
Hence I thin you are wrong Guido, so is the Electoral Commission and so is Gordon Brown, but he only voted for the blasted legislation so what does he know?
No more spinning said Brown.........who is now sending a spin doctor to help Wendy Alexander!
Doh
Alex 7.58PM,
Illegal but acceptable. Fits Labour to a tee.
You lot are slow on KenGate. A guy called anonymous raised it this afternoon on the previous post.
2.5 million? This could get really exciting. I bet this is only the start. Wouldn't you just love to send Messrs PriceyWhoreHouseCroupiers into Ken's office?
Anyway, why is this text window so fucking small?
About Lee Jasper being exposed by Evening Standard at:
http://www.bnvillage.co.uk/news-politics-village/95826-lee-jasper-under-investigation.html
A senior adviser to the Mayor, Ken Livingstone, is under GLA investigation after at least £2.5 million in City Hall money was channelled to organisations controlled by himself, his friends and his business associates.
Lee Jasper, the Mayor's director of equalities and policing, is at the centre of a network of companies which have received large sums of public money from Mr Livingstone while appearing to do little or no work in return.
An Evening Standard investigation has found:
• Hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money paid to the companies is unaccounted for or has disappeared.
• Up to £295,000 is the subject of possible legal action.
• Some of the companies are dormant or have gone out of business.
• Several of the organisations are based in the same small room at a business centre in Kennington.
• The same people, friends or business associates of Mr Jasper - including race activist Errol Walters and businesswoman and reality TV show star Yvonne Thompson - appear as directors or staff members of each organisation.
Mr Jasper, 49, is one of seven policy directors - the London equivalents of civil service permanent secretaries - who work at the Mayor's side developing and implementing policy at the highest level. Mr Jasper has worked for the Mayor since Mr Livingstone was first elected seven years ago, reporting directly to him and earning more than £111,000 a year. They have been longstanding political friends and allies for many years.
The officials have considerable influence over grants, some paid directly by the Mayor's office and others by Mr Livingstone's wholly controlled economic development body, the London Development Agency.
One grant recipient, Diversity International, controlled by a long-standing friend and business associate of Mr Jasper, Joel O'Loughlin, received £295,000 in LDA funding for the Diversity Dividend, a web-based tool for London business, even though the business consultancy has no expertise in computers and is based in Liverpool.
The website does not exist, the company has now gone into liquidation and all the money paid to it has vanished. The liquidator, David Hole, told the Standard that the LDA was seeking the return of "substantial" sums from Diversity International and official liquidation documents at Companies House say he is considering taking legal action against Mr O'Loughlin for "trading offences".
Mr O'Loughlin ran a company with Mr Jasper, is currently a director of the campaigning body 1990 Trust, to which Mr Jasper is closely connected, and is described by Mr Jasper as someone he has "known for years and years".
Mr O'Loughlin failed to return repeated emails and telephone calls from the Standard. The LDA refused to respond to any of our questions about Diversity International, despite being given nearly a week to do so.
Another project, Brixton Base, whose patron is Mr Jasper and whose director is Errol Walters, another friend, has received £287,000 from the LDA over the past two years for "premises" - even though it has occupied an LDA-owned building throughout that time and was charged no rent in the first year, according to mayoral answers to the London Assembly. The GLA inquiry is into Mr Jasper's role in funding this company.
The LDA paid at least a further £230,000 to Brixton Base to equip it as a "creative training hub" for the black community, with a film studio, and to run three short creative training projects.
However, the director of one of those projects, the film-maker Shango B'Song of ITS Cine, told the Standard that he in fact financed the studio and nearly all the spending on the project out of his own pocket - and saw only £8,000 of the LDA grant given to pay for it.
"From the very beginning of the course, Brixton Base's attitude towards our staff and students was unprofessional, dishonest, abusive and sometimes threatening," said Mr B'Song. One of the directors of Brixton Base, not Mr Walters, "reminded me on numerous occasions that [if I complained] they had 'some gangster friends who would break me up'".
Two sources said that a member of Brixton Base staff, not Mr Walters, had threatened the LDA that its offices would be destroyed by gangs if it refused to renew the organisation's funding. The LDA refused to deny receiving such a threat.
In a letter to the LDA, dated 20 October 2006 and obtained by the Standard, nine of the students on the ITS Cine course complained of "attempted intimidation" by Brixton Base staff - who, they said, also lied to funders and potential funders in their presence that Brixton Base had paid for the studio facilities.
Mr B'Song also complained to the LDA, but told the Standard: "Literally as I was leaving the LDA building after the meeting my phone rang. It was Errol. He said he knew where I'd just been and it was no use complaining to the LDA because he had his people on the inside."
The LDA took no action on either complaint but instead paid a further £390,000 to Brixton Base. The Standard has been leaked a series of emails between Mr Jasper and senior staff of the LDA which lay bare Mr Jasper's key role in protecting the project. In June last year, even before Mr B'Song's and his students' complaints had been received, LDA officials had severe doubts about Brixton Base and wanted to evict the organisation from its building.
However, in an email seen by the Standard, Mr Jasper ordered the LDA's senior director, Tony Winterbottom, to "ensure that this action [the eviction] is withdrawn immediately and ensure I am consulted on all major decisions affecting [Brixton Base]". We have also seen emails which show Mr Jasper's close involvement in the project's funding applications.
Despite receiving at least £535,000 to date in LDA grants, Brixton Base's website remains "under construction" and repeated phone calls by the Standard to its listed number over a period of several weeks were never answered.
Mr Walters is also acting director of the Black Londoners Forum, based in the same building as Brixton Base, which has received at least a further £291,000 directly from the Mayor. The Standard has seen the official funding agreement for £53,000 of this money which imposes extraordinarily few obligations on the Black Londoners Forum in return for its grant.
The agreement says that in return for the BLF's money all the campaigning it has to do is "support an online petition" against attacks on asylum seekers. This currently contains 97 signatures.
The BLF's real function appears to be to offer enthusiastic support for the Mayor. Its website republishes mayoral press releases word-for-word as its own and it responds to mayoral consultations with glowing praise of his policies. This is then cited by Mr Livingstone as "evidence" that his policies are supported by the black community.
Mr Walters failed to respond to repeated telephone messages, texts and emailed questions sent to him by the Standard. The LDA and the Mayor's office refused to answer any of our questions about Brixton Base and the BLF, despite being given them almost a week ago. Nor would they deny any of the allegations made by Mr B'Song and his students.
One figure in the GLA Brixton Base probe - although not currently under investigation herself - is Yvonne Thompson, a friend of Mr Jasper who accompanied him on a trip to New York at the LDA's expense.
The Standard has established that two organisations controlled by Ms Thompson have received, or are due to receive, a total of more than £1 million in funding from the LDA. In an apparent conflict of interest, Ms Thompson was a member of the LDA board at the time the grants were approved.
She also chaired the LDA's equality monitoring and review group, on which Mr Jasper is an observer and Errol Walters a "specialist adviser". Ms Thompson insisted last night that she did not sit on any LDA panels which decided funding.
One of Ms Thompson's companies, the European Federation of Black Women Business Owners, received at least £25,000 from the LDA. However, according to the annual accounts, signed by Ms Thompson as director and on file at Companies House, the EFBWBO has throughout its entire existence been "dormant", receiving no income from anyone, let alone the LDA. Ms Thompson said that the LDA's £25,000 went to a different organisation and denied receiving any personal benefit.
Ms Thompson is also the president of the African Caribbean Business Network, a non-profit charitable company which describes itself as "spearheaded" by Mr Jasper but which appears to do relatively little to deserve an LDA grant totalling £990,000 between 2001 and this financial year. In 2005-6, the year of the latest available accounts, the ACBN claimed to have 2,500 members, but the income from membership subscriptions in the accounts suggests that it may actually have had as few as four paid-up members.
In the entire three years 2003-6 - during which time it received £535,000 from the LDA - the ACBN spent just £75,000 on "activities in furtherance of the charity's objectives", spending nothing at all in 2005-6. The LDA, its sole funder, was clearly unhappy: that year's ACBN accounts speak of "limited assurances that the ACBN would secure funding for the future".
Part Two from Evening Standard, the Gauleiter's Bunker team are trying to shut it down by playing the race card:
"However, despite LDA officials' concerns, Ms Thompson managed to win a new deal guaranteeing a further £200,000 payment in each of the following two years.
In April this year, more than a year before the scheduled expiry of her term, Ms Thompson left the LDA board. The LDA refused to say why this occurred. Ms Thompson told us she left because "the LDA's priorities had changed".
Afua Yeboah, a spokeswoman for the ACBN, told the Standard to direct questions about the ACBN's effectiveness to the LDA. She said that subscription income was not an accurate indicator of ACBN membership, claimed the ACBN had delivered 23 events this year and denied that Mr Jasper had any "formal" involvement with the funding of the ACBN.
Ms Yeboah's denials of Mr Jasper's involvement were undermined, however, when Mr Jasper accidentally copied the Standard into an email exchange with her, revealing that he supervised ACBN's response to all our questions.
In one of the emails, sent at 8.46pm yesterday, Mr Jasper orders Ms Yeboah to "now prepare your letter of complaint" to the Standard before our article was even published.
Another associate of Mr Jasper's, Simeon Grossett, described on the ACBN website as "Mr Networker", is a director of the Black Londoners Forum, a co-director of the ACBN and also has his own company, BEM Community Enterprise, which also appears, from its latest accounts, to have received substantial LDA funding, though the LDA refused to confirm this.
The Standard has discovered that the "statement of activities" shown in BEM's accounts to justify its funding is precisely the same words every single year, simply cut and pasted from one year to the next. BEM's claimed office and "training centre" turns out to be a firm of Brixton solicitors, which told us it merely acted as a forwarding address.
Despite being given since last Thursday to respond to our findings, the LDA has refused to answer any of our questions about any of the organisations it funded. Among the questions it declined to answer was how the funding decisions were made, what benefits, if any, the organisations had delivered for the black community and what Mr Jasper's role was in each case.
The Mayor's office refused to answer any of our questions either, although it has had them since Friday, or to discuss the GLA inquiry, instead accusing the Standard of conducting a "campaign targeting black and ethnic minority organisations".
Mr Jasper insisted last night that he did "not get involved" in grant funding decisions, something which at least one of the leaked emails seems to cast doubt on. "I don't take a day-to-day overview of what's happening at Brixton Base," he said. "I'm just the patron, the champion." He sidestepped questions about his relationship with Errol Walters and said any problems at Brixton Base had been "minor matters".
The Standard has learned that the current GLA inquiry, conducted by the authority's chief executive, Anthony Mayer, is the second into Mr Jasper's involvement in Brixton Base within the past six months. The first one cleared Mr Jasper, but was condemned as inadequate and insufficiently probing. In a letter dated 30 October, Mr Mayer says he will have the matter investigated again.
One member of the LDA board, Eric Ollerenshaw, last night described the Standard's findings as "incredible" and said: "We may have to seek the views of the Audit Commission. There's going to have to be an immediate and proper investigation into these allegations [about all the companies], because it calls into question our whole monitoring procedures."
The London Assembly member Richard Barnes last night called for Mr Jasper to be suspended and said: "If the Mayor doesn't take action, he is condoning what went on."
I don't care if this seems off topic. I don't think it is. After all, if the DRS voting machines in use in this country are as easy to subvert, then we as the public effectively cease to have any say in the running of the country. Whatever political party is doing whatever
-----------------------------------------------
So what exactly are you waiting for?
By the way. Since the voting machine fiasco continues to unfold in
Canada, what do you intend to do about the voting machines DRS make for
this company?
Are you honestly stupid enough to believe that a company can make a
secure product without external "red zone" teams like are finding very
serious security problems with all the voting machines in California.
While I freely admit that DRS are not ES&S or Diebold, I cannot find any
favourable "red zone" testing reports for them either, because you
haven't ordered any. Or if you have you haven't published the results.
Until you have trusted, independantly verified, "red zone" team reports,
you're in danger that the public will realise you've paid DRS for taking
their votes away.
These "red zone" teams are security specialists who attempt to
compromise security on voting machines. The Californian "red zone" teams
found a voting machine where :
The security seals could be removed and replaced using "a common kitchen
chemical"
The key lock could be opened with a "common piece of office equipment."
So your checklist for stealing an electronic election is:
bleach
paperclips
laptop
linking cable
Now anyone can steal an election, it makes you wonder why people would
donate to political parties for any reason *except* getting a peerage.
If I'm wrong about this please publish the reports saying so. If I'm
wrong *everyone* needs to know.
The other aspect in danger of being forgotten is that this is quite clearly not just about cash for planning permission, but cash for exclusive planning permission (at least for a time), cash for extending infrastructure at public expense, and cash for relocating Whitehall jobs to the Durham Green development.
This scam shows more joined-up thinking than we ever get from government when it goes about its proper business.
Following the black Kengate perhaps the ES will look into a possible Muslim Kengate. There are undoubtedly similar funding arrangements for other voting blocks that Ken wants to sweeten.
Peter Grimes
Isnt it funny how people who donated to Browns campaign suddenly got jobs with the govt
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article3226400.ece
so Paul got a Govt job after donating to Brown and so did Mendelsohn.
Cash for Govt Jobs.
Guido.
Did you see Hazel Blears on the Daily Politics yesterday?
I saw it on tape last night and I've been researching ever since because I am 100% certain that she was not at all diplomatic with the truth shall we say.
Blears yesterday denied on The Daily Politics that Anthony Bailey (who gave £10,000 to her campaign for the Deputy Leadership) was ever offered the post of Chairman of Labour's Faith task Force.
I suggest Ms Blears reads the following linked article in the Guardian from July last year because it seems quite clear to me that this totally contradicts what she said.
See http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:nJ33-nl_ylgJ:www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,2089276,00.html+Anthony+Bailey+Labour+All+Faith+Task+Force&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk
Mr Bailey's profile on the Eligo International web site also states quite clearly that Ms Blears statement is not quite correct.
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:nUr8xiwVXDsJ:www.eligo.net/aboutus-management-abailey.htm+Anthony+Bailey+Labour+All+Faith+Task+Force&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=uk
What's more according to the Independent on 15th July 2006 he "was one of 28 people who declared in a national press advertisement they were "proud to help fund the Labour Party" by giving "£50,000 to the party to help it recover from the financial crisis it faces following the "cash for peerages" affair" on top of the £10,000 given to Ms Blears Deputy Leadership Campaign.
See this: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1178597.ece
sounds like it is cash for anything at present. How about if we club together and offered them £50 to resign would they take it.
I read my reply from the Electoral Comission this morning. Suprise suprise: a 'we have submitted matters to the police and so can't comment' stonewaller. Guido, at least I tried.
Same here:
Dear "corporal jones"
Thank you for your email. The Electoral Commission announced on 29 November that it was referring matters to the Metropolitan Police. The Electoral Commission is not making any further comment at this stage.
Regards,
Vera Markos
Head of Strategy and
Secretary to the Commission
The Electoral Commission
Trevelyan House
Great Peter Street
London SW1P 2HW
Tel: 020 7271 0681
Fax: 020 7271 0528
Textphone: 18001 020 7271 0681
www.electoralcommission.org.uk
www.aboutmyvote.co.uk
To which I have replied:
"Dear Ms Markos
Thank you for your response. However, Section 4) of the relevant regulation makes it clear that:
"An order may be made under this section whether or not proceedings are brought against any person for an offence connected with the donation."
Therefore disposal of the donated moneys is not a burden to any police investigation and the refusal of the Electoral Commission to comment, citing that the matter has been reported to the police, is neither in the interests of transparency in government nor democracy. In fact such refusal to comment suggests that the Electoral Commission wishes to bury the issue as much as the Labour Party.
If "Democracy matters" as your email proclaims, the Electoral Commission will make a statement regarding the disposal of donated moneys, already admitted to be impermissable by those receiving them, as soon as possible to allay any further public fears regarding the integrity of public bodies dealing with this case."
So it seems that the Electoral Commission also wishes to bury this story by hiding behind referral to the Labour-controlled police, who will presumably "investigate", report their findings to the Labour-controlled Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), who will declare there are no grounds for prosecution of any parties involved. No explanation, no transparency, no accountability, no justice.
Anonymous said...
The London Labour Party is like a cross between Soviet Communism under Stalin, the Black Panthers, Enron, al-qaeda, and the Irgun.
Beats me why any Londoners still vote for them.
Take a look at the ethnic mix there these days anonymous,your little list and realise that's exactly WHY Londoners voted for them
"Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said the party will pay all of the money back, and Labour officials have been holding talks with the Electoral Commission as to how this should be done."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7131540.stm
This looks WAY too much like a negotiation for my liking...