Ex-Ukip MEP jailed for five years over £430k expenses con
Judge attacks sleaze campaigner’s hypocrisy
A FORMER Ukip politician who claimed more than £430,000 in bogus expenses while boasting of cutting corruption has been jailed for five years.
Ashley Mote, 79, submitted false claims for his European Parliament allowances and used the money to pay his mortgage – and his legal bills for a previous benefits fraud conviction.
He used around £100,000 of the taxpayer-funded expenses to pay his legal fees and £67,000 went to pay back cash he had pocketed in income support and housing benefit.
Mote, who had campaigned to clean up political sleaze in Europe, was in court yesterday to hear the judge condemn him as a liar and a hypocrite.
Mr Justice Stuart Smith said Mote had abused public trust and treated his role as an MEP as ‘a cash cow’.
The judge said: ‘ Your greed and dishonesty were matched only by your hypocrisy because while this was going on you carried out a high-profile campaign condemning corruption and the improper use of public money in the very institution from which you were leeching it.’
He continued: ‘As you came towards the end of your time as an MEP you decided to milk what you saw as your cash cow to the limit.’
Mote campaigned as a Ukip candidate for the European Parliament in 2004 and won a seat for South-East England.
The married father- of-two was thrown out of the party before he could take his seat after it emerged he was being prosecuted for benefits fraud.
He was allowed to take up his seat as an independent MEP and then sought to claim immunity from prosecution, but was eventually convicted of 20 charges related to a £60,000 benefits fraud.
The ex-management consultant was jailed for nine months in 2007 but was allowed to remain an MEP because only those jailed for 12 months or more are disqualified.
Southwark Crown Court heard that faced with a legal bill for his defence and subsequent appeals, he submitted expenses for work which he claimed had been done on his behalf as an MEP. He claimed around £436,000 for work supposedly done by groups including the Better Off Out Fund and Direct Action Resistance To Tyranny.
But in reality he used the groups as a ‘front’ and channelled the money into his own accounts through a Danish bank account.
Mote, of Binsted, Hampshire, also claimed allowances of around £100,000 for a firm of solicitors, supposedly for ‘advice in relation to his duties as an MEP’, which also went towards his own legal fees.
In total, he claimed £750,000 between 2004 and 2009, when he decided not to stand for reelection. That figure included his legitimate claims and the £436,000 he pocketed in bogus claims, including supposed payments to whistleblowers.
Meanwhile he continued to campaign against sleaze and corruption in the EU, and even claimed the trial was a political attempt to discredit him.
He denied all the charges but was convicted by a jury of 12 charges including obtaining money by deception, false accounting and fraud.
Mr Justice Smith said Mote was a ‘thoroughly dishonest man’ who had ‘lied, protested, lied and lied again’.
He added: ‘Dishonesty on the part of those involved in the European Parliament is disgraceful and damaging to the institution and its democratic credibility.’
Tim Moloney, QC, for Mote, said his wife now faced having to sell their home to pay his legal costs.
Ukip leader Nigel Farage told the BBC: ‘He was never a Ukip MEP, I’m pleased to say. I thought he was a wrong ’un so I kicked him out of the party.’
‘Democratic credibility’