Ex-Ukip MEP jailed for expenses fraud

A FORMER Ukip MEP who cheated almost £500,000 in European P a r l i a me nt expenses has been jailed for five years.

Ashley Mote, 79, submitted bogus claims for his parliamentary allowance, which was supposed to be for work that organisations had carried out on his behalf.

He used the money to fund his court battles in the UK after he was prosecuted for a previous benefits fraud.

The politician dishonestly obtained about €355,000 and £184,000 of allowances to which he was not entitled.

Mote, of Binsted, Hampshire, was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court with Mr Justice Stuart Smith telling him he had “lied, protested, lied and lied again” during his trial.

“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 leech- ing it. As you came to towards the end of your time as an MEP you decided to milk what you saw as your cash cow to the limit.”

Mote was convicted at trial 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.

The offences took place between November 2004 and July 2010. About £100,000 of the bogus expenses were used to fund Mote’s legal fees when he was prosecuted for benefits fraud. The judge told him that the sentence was reduced from six years and eight months to five years because of his age.

In response to mitigation from Tim Moloney, QC, that Mote had done valuable work as a politician, Mr Justice Smith said: “It’s a bit double-edged, for a person who goes trumpeting loud that he’s going to clear up corruption in the European Parliament while fleecing it as hard as he could.”