I’m the victim of a blackmail plot, says Mayor seen ‘snorting cocaine’
A MAYOR defended himself yesterday after a video emerged allegedly showing him snorting white powder in a toilet cubicle.
Neil Rix, 54, insisted he did not know what he was taking and will not quit his role after footage of alleged drug use was posted online.
Mayor of Dover Councillor Rix claimed he was the victim of a blackmail plot and that his drinks had been spiked before the incident.
The independent councillor said yesterday: “The video forms part of a police investigation into the fact I am being blackmailed.
“It did not happen recently. I was set up, pushed into it and coerced.
“Someone had put drugs into my beer and I did not know that I was being filmed.”
In the video, the mayor of the Kent coastal town is shown bending over a toilet cistern sniffing the powder through a £20 note.
He tells an unidentified man: “Don’t let anyone come... shut that door.
“Don’t want anyone seeing Councillor Rix doing this.
“You see what’s there?” The man replies: “Yeah, you do the big one.”
Councillor Rix said he was not a drug user, adding he was “dead against” drug-taking and had no idea what substance he had snorted.
He said: “I have never done it before. I was drunk… I don’t know what it was I was putting up my nose. It could have been sherbet.”
Asked whether he would be quitting, he said: “No, I’m not at all. I’m not standing down.”
But he added: “I feel I have let down my family but I will get over it.
“I have had a lot of support from people that know me.”
Councillor Rix, the youngest of 11 children, has a scaffolding business and was made mayor in May.
The council said the video and its source were “ambiguous”.
A council spokesman added yesterday: “The mayor has agreed to selfrefer to the monitoring officer for a possible breach of the code of conduct. There may be a criminal investigation but this is a matter for police.”