British Democracy Forum - View Single Post - United Kingdom Independence party accused of diverting EU allowances

Anthony Butcher · 23-02-2008, 09:41 PM

United Kingdom Independence party accused of diverting EU allowances - Times Online

Quote:

THE leader of the eurosceptic United Kingdom Independence party (UKIP) is employing his son as his assistant, using taxpayers’ money, despite the young man being in full-time education.

Nigel Farage’s 19-year-old son Sam is being paid to work for his MEP father through his European Union expenses allowance, despite being a politics student at Exeter University.

Farage’s use of public funds to pay his son is comparable to the case of the disgraced Tory MP Derek Conway, who employed both his sons using parliamentary expenses despite one being a full-time university student.
The revelation comes after a confidential EU report showed that MEPs from a cross-section of parties were abusing staff allowances, which total almost £100m per year.

Farage also employs his wife Kirsten as a £24,000-a-year secretary using public funds. He is being investigated by Olaf, the EU’s antifraud watchdog. Olaf is examining allegations that UKIP has used taxpayers’ money to fund the party over several years, including while Farage, an outspoken critic of MEPs exploiting the EU “gravy train”, has been at the helm.

Olaf has been alerted to UKIP’s use of allowances meant for funding MEPs’ assistants to pay the salaries of party workers. EU rules state that the allowance, of about £125,000 per MEP, should not be used to fund national party workers.

Following the revelation of the confidential EU report last week, Farage publicly criticised the abuse and condemned the EU’s attempt to “brush the matter under the carpet”, telling Newsnight, on BBC television, that UKIP was in Europe “to expose this sort of thing”.

However, leaked e-mails reveal that Farage and his colleagues have failed to provide the EU with requested information about how it gives its regional organisers in Britain jobs as MEPs’ assistants so that their salaries can be paid from public funds.

Farage, who says his party has done nothing wrong, insists that the regional organisers do their party work “in their spare time”, a claim contradicted by a former UKIP regional organiser.
Farage refused to comment on his employing his son, saying: “I am fed up with answering ridiculous questions.”

In an e-mail sent to Farage last July, Koen Snijders, who works for the EU’s general finance directorate, said the UKIP leader and his MEPs’ accountant, Robin Collett, had “promised to produce evidence regarding this expenditure” four months earlier but none had materialised.

Last night Farage said that the paperwork would eventually be supplied.
A survey by The Sunday Times has found that almost a third of the UK’s 78 MEPs boost their family income by paying their spouse or children from their allowance. Labour councillors have donated £1.6m of their expenses to help to get the party out of debt