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.

Met Police refuse to prosecute convicted election fraudster Lutfur Rahman

The Met Police have decided not to pursue criminal charges against the convicted election fraudster Lutfur Rahman and his Tower Hamlets First cronies.

Last year the High Court overturned the corrupt election of Lutfur Rahman as Mayor of Tower Hamlets and the British Department of English Communities & Local Government sent in a team of administrators to take over the running of the council which was rotten to the core.

Despite the High Court ruling that Rahman had broken electoral law in a trial involving as many as 100 witnesses the Met Police claim that there is insufficient evidence to bring a criminal prosecution for the same offences and he will walk away scot free.

This kind of electoral fraud is happening all over the country but the police are scared to get involved for fear of being accused of racism or of getting involved in politics. But a crime is a crime regardless of the colour of the criminal's skin or whether they're a politician. Lutfur Rahman rigged elections, used Imams to influence votes, intimidated voters and racially discriminated against non-Bangladeshis. He profited from his corruption and he did it literally under the noses of police officers who turned a blind eye because they were muslims and they didn't want to get involved in politics. All over the country postal votes are stolen, undue influence is exerted on voters and taxpayers' money is used to buy patronage but it goes uninvestigated because the police are scared.

The answer is to give wider powers to the Electoral Commission to bring prosecutions for electoral fraud. Whether it is the Conservatives illegally overspending on elections by tens of thousands of pounds, Labour activists "helping" people fill in their postal votes and running postal vote factories or Tower Hamlets First getting Imams to tell people God will punish them for not voting for Lutfur Rahman and escorting people into polling stations to watch them vote these crimes cannot continue to go unpunished. The Electoral Commission must be given the power to launch their own investigations and prosecute those who break electoral law. The decision to prosecute must also lie with the Electoral Commission, not the politicised Crown Prosecution Service which has allowed so any MPs and other politicians to get away with fraud and corruption.

Electoral Commission petitioned to remove Tower Hamlets councillors from office

One of the men who brought the case against the former mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman, that saw a special election court remove him from office is taking his fight for democracy further by petitioning for all 17 councillors elected under the now banned Tower Hamlets First Party name removed from office.

Lutfur Rahman was found guilty of 7 charges of vote rigging, lying about his rivals, bribery and exerting spiritual influence during the election campaign that saw his party take control of the borough and him elected as mayor. After his conviction the Labour Party, Respect Party and Unite the Union rallied round him, describing his removal from office as "anti-democratic, anti-Islamic and racist".

Azmal Hussein has petitioned the Electoral Commission to remove the Tower Hamlets First councillors who were elected in the same corrupt election from office and call a by-election. If the Electoral Commission refuses then he intends to go to the High Court to ask a judge to remove them.

Lutfur Rahman stripped of Tower Hamlets mayoralty and banned from seeking re-election

Lutfur Rahman, the man elected as Mayor of Tower Hamlets last year in a rigged election, has been removed from office by a special election court.

Election Commissioner, Richard Mawry, ruled that Rahman and his assistant Alibor Choudhary broke election law on several occasions during the election campaign and whilst in office. He has been stripped of his mayoralty and banned from standing for re-election.

Under his leadership, members of the Tower Hamlets First party engaged in corruption, bribery and exercising undue spiritual influence over voters. An audit by accountants PriceWaterhouseCooper last year found that council officers were overruled in 81% of grant applications and that more than £400k had been given to ineligible organisations.

Tower Hamlets has been run by a Chief Executive and administrators since last year when Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, appointed them to stop Rahman and his cronies from mismanaging the council.

100 witness to testify against Lutfur Rahman in Tower Hamlets electoral fraud case

Four voters in Tower Hamlets who have managed to haul Mayor Lutfur Rahman in front of a judge to hear charges of electoral fraud are planning to call 100 witnesses.

The court has been told that Rahman likened his Labour opponent to the 1930s fascist Oswald Moseley and he and his supporters told voters that he was anti-Islamic and a racist. The court also heard that Rahman and his supporters claimed that the Labour Party were planning sex shops and council tax increases in the borough and that they fraudulently obtained votes through ballot stuffing, intimidation and accompanying women into polling booths to fill out their ballot for them. The fresh allegations against Rahman and his party that emerged in January are part of this court case against him.

Rahman denies the charges but there was sufficient evidence against him and his Tower Hamlets First party for the Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government to send in administrators to run large parts of the council in place of the Mayor and his councillors.

New allegations against Lutfur Rahman in Tower Hamlets election fraud investigation

The net is closing in on Tower Hamlets mayor, Lutfur Rahman and the Tower Hamlets First Party.

Police have been investigating elections in Tower Hamlets since at least 2010 because of allegations of fraud and corruption. The allegations of electoral fraud were historically made against Labour but when Lutfur Rahman left Labour to set up his own party, the alleged fraud followed him to Tower Hamlets First.

An investigation by auditors PwC found evidence of widespread cronyism and dubious business decisions benefiting Rahman's supporters, prompting the Department for Culture & Local Government to appoint a Chief Executive and commissioners to run the council.

New allegations have been made against Rahman and other Tower Hamlets First councillors and officials that 30 council employees were taken to a meeting at a Bangladeshi restaurant and threatened to sack them if they didn't collect 100 fraudulent postal votes for Lutfur Rahman. These will be heard along with the existing allegations of vote rigging, fraudulent vote counting, ballot stuffing, voter intimidation and exercising spiritual influence.

Tower Hamlets council candidate accuses Tory councillor of being KKK Grand Wizard

A council candidate in Tower Hamlets has apologised for calling a Conservative councillor a Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard.

Tower Hamlets First candidate for St Katherine's & Wapping, Stuart Madwell, made the offensive (and libellous) comments on Facebook about Conservative councillor Peter Golds. The comments have been reported to the police and Cllr Golds is taking legal advice.

Tower Hamlets First is the party the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman, represents. Rahman was recently investigated by the police over claims that he had illegally doubled funding for Bangladeshi groups in Tower Hamlets to buy support.