Another week, another MP expenses scandal.
This time, it’s former UKIP MEP Ashley Mote who has been found guilty of falsely claiming almost £500,000 in expenses.
Mote was elected to represent the south east of England in the European Parliament in 2004 and actually campaigned to clean up sleaze in Brussels.
However, he was suspended by UKIP a short time later after the party discovered he was facing separate charges for benefit fraud.
The 79-year-old was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court yesterday after being found guilty of 12 fraud-related offences in May.
The offences, which included fraud, acquiring criminal property and false accounting, took place between 2004-2010.
He had claimed he was paying people who were “whistleblowers”.
Mote has already served a nine-month prison sentence after being convicted of benefit fraud in 2007, with a judge describing him as “a truly dishonest man”. Yeah, pretty much…
