Birds of a Feather: Tory Charged with Vote Fraud as Chancellor Takes £70k Tax Money for His Private House
February 17, 2009 by BNP News
Filed under National News
The disgraceful antics of the Tweedledee Tweedledum Labour/Tory Party know no end: A Tory deputy mayor has been charged with vote fraud while news has emerged that the Labour chancellor has taken over £70,000 tax money for his private house.
Tory deputy mayor of Slough, Berkshire, Mohammed Aziz, has been charged with inventing “ghost voters” to ensure the Conservatives could snatch a marginal seat from Labour at a council election, a court has heard.
Mr Aziz and six Tory colleagues invented 19 inhabitants living in a house known to be derelict, all of whom “applied” for postal votes. Overall the Tory boys invented more than 100 fake voters and used postal voting forms to help secure victory for Tory candidate Raja Mohammed Eshaq Khan, a court heard.
Reading Crown Court heard that the fraud was carried out in the Slough Borough Council elections in May 2007. Charles Miskin QC, prosecuting, said Khan had stood unsuccessfully twice before, but in 2007 in a shock victory he took the Central ward seat by 120 votes.
Investigations showed electoral role numbers in the ward had swelled from 6,600 to 7,215, and that a large number of postal voting applications were lodged, of which the “overwhelming majority” were from new registrations. The ward had the highest turnout in the borough, at 44.3 percent.
Mr Miskin said it was “striking how many people were registered at a number of addresses where people were already registered.” They included a house which was known to be derelict, but from where no fewer than 19 people had registered to vote.
Mr Miskin said that Eshaq Khan, who admits conspiracy to defraud and perverting the course of justice, had been held in high esteem among fellow members of the Kashmiri and Pakistani community in Slough, and was the Vice President of the Pakistan Welfare Association.
Six others including the former Slough Deputy Mayor, Mohammed Aziz, Altaf Khan, Arshad Raja, Yasar Mumtaz, Gul Nawaz Khan and Mahboob Khan deny being involved in rigging the election. The court heard that Altaf Khan was caught at a polling station posing as a legitimate voter when someone who knew the real person saw what was happening and called police. The trial continues.
Meanwhile it has emerged that Labour chancellor Alistair Darling used the same system as Jacqui Smith, whose claims for a second home in London have also attracted criticism, to claim thousands of pounds to live in his own house.
Between 2003 and 2005, Mr Darling registered rooms in two flats in London as his main residence instead of the large home he shares with his wife Margaret in Edinburgh. Using the same system exploited by Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, this allowed him to claim thousands of pounds for ‘housing costs’ towards his second home.
MPs who split their time between their constituencies and Westminster can nowadays elect their London or family homes as their main place of residence.
However, designating the larger property as their second home allows them to claim more under the Commons allowance system, including mortgage interest increases, council tax, decoration and utility bills.
The Chancellor and his wife, Margaret, bought a large home in an opulent part of Edinburgh for £570,000 in 1998. Its value is now estimated to be £1.2 million. In 2003 Mr Darling took cheap lodgings with Lord Moonie, one of the peers at the centre of the ‘cash for amendments’ scandal, who owned and lived in a South London flat.
Mr Darling inhabited a single room in the £260,000 property in Lambeth, which Lord Moonie bought from Gordon Brown in 1992. Commons rules required all ministers to designate their London homes as their main residence until 2004, after which they were told to list their ‘main home’.
Between 2001 and early 2004, when he had no choice but to declare Edinburgh as his ’second home’, he claimed a total of £45,954 towards his family house. However, the Chancellor continued to list the room in Lord Moonie’s flat as his main residence after the rule change gave him the choice.
This enabled him to claim a further £15,341 in the 2004-05 financial year for his Edinburgh home. In contrast, the typical rent for a room in flat in Lambeth was about £150 per week, or £7,800 per year.
Mr Darling then moved to a room in another flat, again listing it with the Commons as his main residence. In the 2005-06 financial year he claimed a further £19,436 in respect of his second home. In total he claimed more than £70,000 for his second home over five years, including almost £25,000 in the two years after the rule change.
A spokesman for Mr Darling stressed the Chancellor had not broken any rules, adding that he is “fastidious” about his expense claims.