West Midlands Police investigating Sandwell councillors

Sandwell Council has referred a damning report into the conduct of some of its councillors to West Midlands Police's Regional Organised Crime Unit.

UKIP councillors have been pushing for investigations into dodgy dealings at Sandwell for some time. The Deputy Leader of the council and cabinet member for regeneration resigned in 2015 over allegations of wrongdoing relating to the sale of council property. The Deputy Leader failed to declare a financial interest in a company that got a large council contract, sold a council-owned property to his son on the cheap and then allegations of vote rigging were made.

Allegations of conspiracy to defraud and misconduct in public office are being investigated by the police.

Oh, the irony ...

Head of IMF escapes unpunished after being convicted of negligence over €404m fraud

Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the discredited International Monetary Fund, has been convicted of negligence related to fraudulent payments to a French businessman when she was French Finance Minister.

Lagarde failed to block fraudulent compensation payments of €404m to French businessman and former City Affairs Minister, Bernard Tapie, whilst serving as Finance Minister. This was judged to be an abuse of power by Lagarde and Tapie was ordered to return the money with interest. Tapie has a chequered past having been caught match fixing whilst president of Olympique de Marseille football club, convicted of corruption and subordination of witnesses and being banned from political office after being made personally bankrupt.

Although Lagarde has been convicted of negligently allowing hundreds of millions of €uro of fraudulent payments to be made to a former colleague she won't be punished after the court ruled that no criminal offence had been committed.

Another Tower Hamlets First councillor jailed for fraud

Another Tower Hamlets First councillor has been jailed for fraud although the corrupt former Mayor of Tower Hamlets still manages to escape justice.

Shahed Ali was convicted of housing fraud this week and sentenced to 5 months in prison. He has been immediately banned from office and an election will be held to replace him. He had fraudulently applied for a council house despite owning a number of properties. There are 20,000 people on the housing waiting list in Tower Hamlets.

Had Ali pleaded guilty to the fraud instead of going to trial the council's legal bill would have been just £4k but because he waited until the last minute to change his plea the legal bills have risen to £70k.

The Tower Hamlets First Party was struck off the register and their Mayor, Lutfur Rahman, banned from office after a special election court convicted him and his party of widespread electoral fraud, exerting undue spiritual influence over voters, voter intimidation and misconduct in office. He was banned from office despite Respect, Labour and the Trades Unions campaigning to save his skin but the Met Police refused to prosecute his for the offences.

EU's internal auditors refuse to sign off accounts for 22nd year running

The EU Court of Auditors have refused to sign off the EU's accounts for the 22nd year in a row as levels of error and fraud reach new highs.

Their 320 page report highlights serious fraud and errors amounting to 3.8% of the EU's total budget. As much as 42% of spending under the ERDF, CF, ESF and OP programmes was affected by material errors. Projects in Azerbaijan and Mozambique - neither of which are in Europe, let alone the EU - were highlighted as examples of spending where there was no evidence the projects that were being funded even existed. They also highlight the EU's propensity for measuring the success of projects by the amount of money they put into them rather than what the projects achieve.

The amount of error and fraud comes to about £4.8bn. That's the size of the entire Child Trust Fund or the English NHS maintenance and repair budget before George Osborne slashed it this year.

SNP MP charged with fraud

SNP MP, Natalie McGarry, has been charged with fraud offences relating to the finances of SNP's Glasgow Regional Association and Women for Independence.

McGarry was reported to the police 10 months ago for alleged fraud after audits showed money was unaccounted for at both organisations.

Former MEP Nikki Sinclaire fraud trial starts

Former We Demand a Referendum Now Party MEP, Nikki Sinclaire, went on trial today to answer 10 charges of fraud and misconduct brought on behalf of the EU's fraud investigation department, OLAF.

Sinclaire has been charged with misconduct in public office and transferring or converting criminal property (also known as money laundering).

Sinclaire was first elected to the EU Parliament as a UKIP MEP but was booted out of the party when she waged a divisive and destructive civil war after losing to Nigel Farage in a leadership election. She launched a sex discrimination case against the party and was awarded a default judgement after the party's lawyers missed the deadline to file their defence. UKIP was the first (and still only) party to have a transgender MEP.

The trial is expected to last three weeks.

OLAF investigating £675m of fraud in last year's EU budget

The EU's anti-fraud department, OLAF, is investigating 1,400 cases of fraud in the EU budget totalling £675m from 2015 alone.

One of the cases being investigated involves the owner of a factory being given £1m to buy vegetable chilling machinery from himself at an inflated price. Another involves evasion of the EU's 54.3% protectionist tariffs on Chinese solar panels by falsifying documents relating to their origin.

The EU is keen to point out that the fraud amounts to only 0.6% of the EU's budget but that's enough to build a new hospital or nearly 6 years of the British government's homelessness budget.

A large proportion of the fraud investigations are for eastern European countries.

Labour MEP jailed for fraud

Disgraced Labour MEP Peter Skinner has been jailed for four years for fraud.

Skinner served three terms as a Labour MEP for the south east of England between 1999 and 2014. Between 2007 and 2009 he stole about £100k from the taxpayer which he used to pay his divorce settlement and fund a honeymoon in the US for his second marriage.

Labour say Skinner is no longer a member of their party but his website still hasn't been updated.

Daily Mail uncovers widespread EHIC card fraud

The Daily Mail have uncovered widespread EU Health Insurance Card (EHIC) fraud by eastern Europeans.

Using a Hungarian undercover reporter, the Daily Mail have found that EU citizens in eastern Europe have been using fake addresses to register with GPs in the UK and then apply for an EHIC card which entitles them to free emergency medical treatment in their own country. But unscrupulous doctors are providing non emergency medical treatment abroad and charging it back to the NHS.

Conservative ex-councillor ordered to pay back just £290 to pensioners she conned out of over £26k

A Conservative ex-councillor on Wycombe District Council has been ordered to pay back just £290 of the £26,350 she stole from two vulnerable elderly people.

Jeanette Mann befriended the elderly residents so she could steal from them, emptying the bank accounts of one woman and pilfering from the account of another.

Mann lost all but £290 of the money she stole which the courts have confiscated to give back to her victims.

Labour candidate fined and sentenced to community service for fraud

Labour election candidate for Wellingborough & Rushden, Richard Garvie, has been fined and sentenced to community service for committing fraud.

Garvie fraudulently used a closed bank account to buy train tickets knowing that the account was closed and that he was spending the bank's money. He was ordered to pay £894 to the bank, £400 court costs, a £60 victim surcharge and sentenced to 60 hours of community service.

The outcome of the police investigation into inappropriate messages he sent to a school girl after a hustings is unknown.

Almost €1bn of EU budget lost to fraud and bad accounting last year

The EU lost almost €1bn to fraud and bad accounting in 2014 according to its internal anti-fraud office, OLAF.

The losses represent around 0.7% of the total budget of €142.7 for 2014.

The EU's own internal auditors have refused to sign the EU's accounts off for 19 years and if they've managed to lose this much money to fraud and bad accounting, it looks like it's shortly going to be 20 years.

Ex-MEP Ashley Mote convicted of fraud

Former MEP, Ashley Mote, who was thrown out of the party shortly after being elected in 2004 when he admitted to being investigated for fraud has been found guilty of fraud and false accounting.

A jury took less than 2 hours to find Mote guilty of four counts of obtaining a money transfer by deception, three of false accounting, two of fraud, and one each of acquiring criminal property, concealing criminal property and theft.

Mote lied to UKIP during the selection process for the 2004 EU elections, concealing the fact that the DWP were investigating him for fraud which would of course have barred him from holding office in UKIP or standing for election for the party. When he eventually admitted that he was under investigation for fraud he was expelled from the party and sat as an independent MEP until 2009.

Labour council candidate in Plymouth jailed for fraud

A Labour council candidate in Plymouth has been jailed for two years for fraud.

Charmaine Bowers fraudulently obtained £121k selling non-existent tickets for an electronica concert in Belgium which she used to pay for holidays, jewellery, clothes, TVs and computers.

Former Labour mayor and councillor jailed for theft and fraud

The former Labour mayor of North Lincolnshire has been given a three and a half year prison sentence for defrauding a Yemeni man.

Jawaid Ishaq was a Labour councillor for 30 years, the Labour mayor of Sunderland and the Labour mayor of North Lincolnshire. He faked a power of attorney and helped himself to shares and bank accounts owned by Ali Sultan, defrauding him of £66k. He was found guilty of 9 charges of fraud and one of theft and cleared of a further 5 charges of fraud and another of theft.

Nikki Sinclaire denies charges of fraud and misconduct

Former We Demand a Referendum Party MEP, Nikki Sinclaire, has denied charges of money laundering, fraud and misconduct in a public office charges.

Sinclaire was formerly a UKIP MEP and prior to that a Conservative Party activist. She left UKIP under a cloud after losing a leadership battle against Nigel Farage and throwing her teddies out of her pram.

She was charged at Birmingham Crown Court with misconduct in a public office by making, or causing to be made, false or dishonest claims for travel expenses. She was also charged with fraudulently transferring criminal property into her bank account.

A trial date has been set for October 19th with a pre-trial review on October 2nd.

[UPDATED] Round-up of LibLabCon, SNP and Green racists, fraudsters, sex offenders, perverts, drink drivers and general crooks in 2014

The "News Reporter" responsible for a series of anti-UKIP articles on the BuzzFeed website published an article yesterday entitled "24 Times UKIP Went Too Far In 2014".

In the interests of balance, here is a round-up of the various racists, fraudsters, sex offenders, perverts, drink drivers and general crooks in the LibLabCon, SNP and Green parties that the national media mostly ignored this year:

January

• Swale borough councillors refuse to resign despite moving 150 miles away from their ward
• Conservative Councillor suspended for alleged racist comments
• Left wing extremists assault Nigel Farage in Kent

February

• Give your postal vote to the Post Office not the Labour Party
• Tory troll Joshua Bonehill-Paine charged with making malicious communications
• Conservative Party member was part of a child kidnap gang

March

• Racist MP Diane Abbott accuses UKIP of fostering racism
• Tories select former BNP activist for by-election

April

• Lib Dem councillor in Exmouth found guilty of breach code of conduct
• Shamed Lib Dem porn councillors told to resign
• Disgraced ex-Lib Dem Hancock standing for re-election in Portsmouth
• Warrant issued for Conservative ex-councillor
• Tory wannabe councillors in Hillingdon admit discrimination against non-Tory areas
• Tory councillor calls himself "Sir" for 19 years
• Labour candidate in Harrow a convicted benefits cheat
• Lib Dem Councillor resigns over £1,200 charity theft
• Labour official admits electoral fraud in leaked email
• Tory councillor: When rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it

May

• Labour Deputy Council Leader suspended over electoral fraud allegation
• Newham Conservatives in hot water over leaflets again
• Sheriff of Gloucester apologises for lying on election leaflet
• Labour MP demands withdrawal of Labour leaflet
• Labour councillor prosecuted for firearms offence
• Labour activist makes homophobic remarks against councillor
• Conservative councillor convicted of firearms offence
• Newham Conservatives deliver "sectarian" leaflet
• Conservative councillor arrested over allegations of impersonating a barrister
• Labour councillor's benefit fraud trial postponed
• Lib Dem benefit cheat councillor blocked from council committees
• Conservative councillor banned for drink driving
• Police called in over Labour postal vote fraud complaint in Slough
• Conservative fraudster arrested for electoral offences
• Tower Hamlets Conservative candidate being investigated by police
• Foot fetishist Lib Dem apologises for sleazy Twitter account
• Independent panel resigns in protest at Conservative councillors' allowances
• Conservative ex-mayor charged with possession of indecent images of children

June

• Labour councillor in London under investigation for electoral fraud
• Chuka Umunna says UKIP supporters are too thick to use email or internet
• Disgraced Lib Dem MP Hancock admits "inappropriate and unprofessional" relationship
• Tory candidate for Newark tries to cover up his privileged upbringing and wealth

July

• Leicestershire Labour councillor paid £2,750 per meeting
• Leicester Tory Councillor charged with assault
• Surrey Conservative Councillor convicted of assaulting his ex-girlfriend
• Labour MEP says people from white, rural backgrounds are racists
• Green councillor calls soldiers "hired killers"

August

• Lib Dem Mayor and Lib Dem and Labour councillors resign over sex offender taxi drivers
• Broxtowe Labour councillor urged to resign over racist remark
• Guildford Conservative councillor charged with fraud, deception and pretending to be a barrister
• Labour activist threatened with expulsion over homophobia named as one of their top activists
• Leicester Labour councillor in trouble again
• Wigan Lib Dem porn councillor censured by standards committee
• Hounslow Labour councillor applies to have indecent assault charge dismissed
• Shaun Wright refuses to resign over Rotherham child abuse report
• Labour Mayor of Salford facing malfeasance investigation
• Labour leader of Wrexham council sacks councillor for raising concerns about social services
• Labour councillor charged with dangerous driving and attempted wounding
• Rotherham Council child snatchers allowed 1,400 children to be raped and abused
• SNP councillor who lives in Austria missed 40 out of 47 meetings last year
• Ex-BNP, ex-English Democrat adult model joins Conservatives
• Labour councillor suspended for swearing at whip
• Wirral Labour marking their own homework
• Lib Dem councillor for Fareham lives in Saudi Arabia

September

• Tories threaten potential defectors with character assassination
• Ken Clarke and Boris Johnson: UKIP voters are elderly men with disappointing lives who have sex with vacuum cleaners
• Labour Mayor of Hartlepool in trouble again
• Rochester Conservatives organise fake protest against Mark Reckless
• Conservative Minister resigns over sex scandal

October

• Lib Dem Mayor of Watford accused of abusing her position
• Conservative councillor who suggested executing travellers resigns
• Lib Dem campaigning in Botswana at taxpayer's expense
• Highland Lib Dem councillor forced to resign for sharing anti-Muslim propaganda
• St Helens Labour PPC to stand trial for assault
• SNP Councillor charged with homophobic assault
• Former Lib Dem Mayor of Milton Keynes implicated in fake visa scam
• Chukka Umunna accepts donation from tax dodge advisors
• Maidenhead Conservative councillor apologises for saying travellers should be executed
• Green Party Peer arrested over illegal protest in London
• St Albans Conservative councillor assault trial date set
• Lord Freud to keep his job despite saying disabled are worth less than able-bodied people
• Conservative's Rochester "postal primary" gimmick is an election expense
• Labour Mayor of Rochdale apologises for saying she would have rigged by-election result
• Another Labour peer calls for charges to use the NHS
• York Labour councillor calls Conservative councillors "seriously obese"
• SNP councillor left council meeting to play games
• Malvern Green Party councillor banned from council offices
• Complaint about Conservative councillor's game playing in meetings
• UKIP councillor calls for investigation into Sandwell Council asset sale

November

• Former Labour councillor charged with defrauding council she sat on
• County Durham Labour Councillor admits child sex abuse
• North Cornwall Council warns schools not to allow Lib Dem councillor near children
• Rochester & Strood Green Party's disrespectful Remembrance Sunday anti-war campaign

December

• North London Labour: UKIP has "evil money grabbing jews" in the party
• Lib Dem councillor gives "Nazi salute" as Labour councillors award themselves 24% pay rises
• Fake barrister Conservative councillor pleads not guilty to fraud charges
• Lib Dem ex-councillor sacked as magistrate
• Iain Duncan Smith talks down food banks with some dodgy maths
• Three Conservative MPs address London Swinton Circle
• Former Lib Dem Mayor of Horncastle convicted of animal welfare offences
• Conservative Councillor says being "brown and a woman" is a handicap
• Conservative councillor criticised for laughing during speech about 7 year old flood victim

Fake barrister Conservative councillor pleads not guilty to fraud charges

Guildford Conservative councillor, Monika Juneja, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of forgery, three counts of forgery, one count of deception and one count of willfuly pretending to be a barrister.

The case has been adjourned to 11th May and Juneja, who has previously claimed that her prosecution is a racist campaign against her to undermine Guildford Borough Council's local plan, has been warned by the judge not to speak to the press or use her trial as a publicity stunt.

Former Labour councillor charged with defrauding council she sat on

A former Labour councillor has appeared in court charged with defrauding Wigan Council over fake child care expenses from the time she was a councillor.

Emma McGurrin is accused of making 9 false claims for child care in 2012 and 2013. She denies the claims but one of the women whose names appeared on fake receipts has already admitted her part in the fraud at a magistrate's court.

Calls for Conservative Leader of Guildford Borough Council to stand down over support for fake barrister councillor

The Conservative leader of Guildford Borough Council has refused to step down over his continued support for a councillor charged with forgery, fraud by false representation, obtaining monetary advantage by deception and wilfully pretending to be a barrister.

Effingham Residents' Association say that the leader of the council, Cllr Stephen Mansbridge, should have sacked Cllr Monika Juneja when she was charged rather than trying to protect her but in response, Mansbridge has repeated Juneja's claim that she is the victim of a campaign to discredit their local plan. He didn't, however, repeat Cllr Juneja's claim that the people trying to bring her to justice are racists.

Cllr Juneja has been charged with forging letters and qualifications to falsely claim to be a barrister to get legal jobs in several councils over a 14 year period. Wilfully pretending to be a barrister is a criminal offence but a relatively minor one compared to 14 years of sustained fraud, obtaining taxpayers' money by deception. She isn't the victim of a campaign against a local plan, she's being brought to justice and Cllr Mansbridge has shown appalling judgement in not only supporting her but continuing to mislead residents as to the true nature of the charges against Cllr Juneja.