Farage should open his books to salvage credibility, says former sleaze watchdog

 ::zomb:: ::zomb:: ::zomb:: 

Nigel Farage must throw open his books to an independent auditor if he is to remain a “credible” politician, the former head of Westminster’s sleaze watchdog has said.

The Ukip leader is under pressure to explain what happened to almost £60,000 in EU funds which The Times revealed he said that he spent on a West Sussex office given to him rent-free.

This week Olaf, the EU’s anti-fraud office, is expected to decide whether it will pursue a full investigation into the Ukip leader after a former senior party official made an official complaint.

Sir Alistair Graham, chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life from 2003 to 2007, said that Mr Farage must open his books to explain what happened to the money. “I’m sure if he wants to be a credible European candidate in future he should be accountable in that way,” he said. Referring to Mr Farage’s comments on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme last week when the MEP said that he would be open to allowing an independent auditor to inspect accounts “if that would settle the argument”, Sir Alistair said: “I think he should keep to his public statement and we can all be satisfied that there’s detailed information to back up his claims that the money has been used appropriately.

He said it was “ridiculous” for Mr Farage to claim that he was being unfairly picked out for questions about his use of allowances. “I just don’t think that’s a tenable argument,” he said. “In the end its public money — whether it’s European money or UK public money it doesn’t really matter. It all comes from taxpayers’ taxes and therefore whoever uses that money has to be accountable for guaranteeing to the public its being used in an appropriate fashion to fulfil your public duties.”

Under EU rules, MEPs receive ¤4,299 a month to pay for an office and expenses incurred in carrying out constituency work in their home country. The money is paid into an MEP’s personal bank account with no requirement to provide the European Parliament with receipts or a breakdown to show it has been spent within the rules.

Criticising the “incredible” arrangement, Sir Alistair said it was a “monstrously loose and ineffective system”.

He added: “It’s a wanton waste of public money that you can allow someone to claim without providing receipts. If you think in the UK system at one time you could only claim up to £250 with receipts and they’ve even stopped that now.”

Sir Alistair said the European Parliament’s system was wide open to abuse.

Ukip also faces questions over nearly £300,000 that was paid out from Mr Farage’s local branch in 2004 and 2005 as unexplained “other costs”, when even payments for as little as £496 on communications were itemised.

Six former officials and whistleblowers have come forward to allege that they were silenced, ignored or forced out of the party after questioning its use of EU funds and donations. Ukip has described their claims as “historical”, derriding them as “very unimpressive people” who the party had weeded out.

The remarks by the former standards chief came as it emerged that Neil Hamilton had been demoted from his role as Ukip’s campaigns director.

The former Tory minister caused a headache for Mr Farage at his party’s conference when the Ukip leader was confronted over the ex-MP’s involvement in the cash-for-questions scandal.

He insisted that Mr Hamilton was merely the “backroom boy”, but Mr Hamilton contradicted him. “I haven’t been in the backroom today, have I?” he asked reporters after coming off the podium.

The decision to axe Mr Hamilton from the campaign role suggests that Ukip is sensitive to suggestions of impropriety, despite attacking last week’s Times reports as a smear campaign.

The former Tory has been replaced by the party’s new director of communications, Patrick O’Flynn.

The negative headlines appear to have done little to damage Mr Farage. A poll by Survation for The Mail on Sunday, showed the party topping a Westminster constituency for the first time. The survey of 506 voters in Eastleigh, where the party came second in last year’s by-election, put Ukip in first place on 32 per cent.

The Times

http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/ukip/article/3583/farage-should-open-his-books-to-salvage-credibility-says-former-sleaze-watchdog


....Bunch of racist and homophobic chancers, also demonstrated by the racists and fascists that support then on here!

Tess the dog

Sphinx

Matti (Tommy Spunk  ://?roflmao?/: )

Smelly

...Those are the Fascists that own up to the fact!


 ::zomb:: ::zomb:: ::zomb:: 

Some people ought to learn how EU expenses work.

MEPs are paid a set amount for expenses with no requirement for receipts and they cannot give any unspent money back.

British MEPs decided a while ago to publish their own expenditure which is not required that they do by the EU - very few MEPs outside of the UK bother.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100267778/if-nigel-farages-expenses-bother-you-vote-to-leave-the-eu/

The EU haven't signed off their books for the last nearly 20 years.


It is a corrupt and unwanted, undemocratic fascist dictatorship.


Just more of the predicted UKIP smear campaign....

Who are the Times journalists trying so desperately to undermine UKIP?

Who are the Times journalists behind the constant attacks on Nigel Farage and UKIP? Perhaps it will not surprise you to know that most have family or personal connections to the Conservative Party and that the majority are from immensely privileged backgrounds that have enabled them to prosper as part of the “chumocracy” run by David Cameron. Here is our rundown of the main players:

Baron Daniel Finkelstein: Privately educated former senior official at Conservative Central Office. A key columnist on the paper known for his particular closeness to Chancellor George Osborne. Recently made a Lord by Osborne and Cameron. He has in the past been embarrassed by claims that he has written speeches for Osborne while simultaneously working as Times chief leader writer. According to the Spectator in September 2013, “what Danny writes today George thinks tomorrow”. He was once overheard on a train boasting to his mother on his mobile about writing Osborne’s conference speech. George Osborne also admitted at the Leveson inquiry that the journalist helped him with "one-liners" for his speeches and once reportedly remarked that he spoke to Mr Finkelstein more often than he did to his wife. Furthermore, Danny Finkelstein was named by David Cameron as one of the six journalists whom he sees “so frequently” that he could not be expected to list the meetings, on account of their sheer volume.

Matthew Parris: Privately educated former Conservative MP whose partner Julian Glover worked as a speechwriter for Cameron and now works as an adviser to Conservative Cabinet minister Patrick McCloughlin, who is coincidentally the MP who took over the seat of Mr Parris when he stood down from Parliament. Parris makes frequent and virulent attacks on UKIP for example in June 2013 he wrote an article for the Spectator article entitled “Why UKIP is a party of extremists” and another for The Times in October 18 2013 called “England loves winners, so UKIP must lose”....

http://www.ukip.org/who_are_the_times_journalists_trying_so_desperately_to_undermine_ukip

Tommy Monk wrote:The EU haven't signed off their books for the last nearly  20 years.


It is a corrupt and unwanted, undemocratic fascist dictatorship.


Just more of the predicted UKIP smear campaign....

Yes they have, it's been posted many times.

UK media – for example the Daily Mail, Daily Express and the Times – yet again reported that the European Court of Auditors (ECA) has not signed off the EU accounts. Some media -this time including the Daily Telegraph – claim that UK taxpayers will be liable to pay back GBP 800 million. Both statements are simply false.

The Court did in fact sign off as accurate the EU’s accounts for 2012 – as it has done each year since 2007. It stated this clearly in its press release http://www.eca.europa.eu/en/Pages/AR_2012.aspx.

The ECA (not the European Commission) was so concerned by the flagrant inaccuracy of so many reports that it tweeted Mail online and other media in UK and beyond to request changes @EUAuditorsECA

The ECA annual report tracks the amount of errors that affect financial transactions under the EU budget against a stringent set of rules and procedures.

Many media neglect to emphasise that – while the Court makes clear the Commission also has more work to do – most of the errors take place at national level, including frequently in the UK, and concern decentralised programmes like agriculture and regional funding rather than money managed centrally in Brussels. Member States are responsible for managing 80% of EU funds.

They fail to mention that where errors have serious budgetary effects, the Commission succeeds in clawing most of the money back so it can then be used for other projects: about £3.8 billion/EUR 4.4 billion in 2012.

So the fact that the error rate for 2012 is 4.8% (compared to 3.9% for 2011) does not mean – as the newspapers claim, despite having the situation fully explained to them – that the extrapolated amount of money from the EU annual budget total is written off.

Nor does this mean that the UK (or any other member state) will have to pay back any amount into a bank account in Brussels.

Neither does the fact that a project has not fully adhered to the procedures as it should have, always signify that the money is wasted or that the main project objectives were not achieved.

For example, if member state authorities spending EU money on a new bridge did not properly follow public procurement rules – that is not acceptable. But it does not mean that the bridge is not built or the money is wasted.

These Court of Auditors reports and the increase in the error rate this year, after a long period of improvement, are serious matter, something which the Commission fully recognises. It has in the past seven years endeavoured to reduce the number of errors by introducing modern accounting practices, tighter rules on EU spending, stricter supervision, and stronger control measures.

Under the next seven-year budget 2014-2020 the EU will implement further reforms http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-947_en.htm to simplify the system and introduce even more stringent rules to encourage all Member States – including the UK – to take more care about the way they spend EU funds.

For example, the Commission has had to claw back from UK nearly EUR 300 million in corrections to UK administered EU agriculture spending over the last three years. There have also been significant errors in regional policy –payments to UK programmes have had to be interrupted several times.

As a reader put it on one of the newspapers’ blog threads – this is not the EU wasting member states’ money, but member states misspending European money.

That is certainly a very simplistic summary.

But it is perhaps less simplistic than much of the media reporting of the ECA report which has yet again seen newspapers throwing incorrect figures around to kindle public outrage.
European auditors point to errors but sign off EU's accounts – some UK media decline to listen to what the auditors say , 4.8 out of 5 based on 19 ratings

http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/european-auditors-point-to-errors-but-sign-off-eus-accounts/

EU Spending is Riddled with Corruption
"Opportunities for fraud are open and they are taken advantage of. The most elementary precautions are neither taken nor even contemplated. The reverse is the case. People such as myself, who attempt to bring openness and accountability to the system, are pursued, suspended and dismissed."

(Marta Andreasen. Whistle-blower and ex Chief Accountant to the European Commission.)

The European Parliament’s £1.5 billion budget is beset by the abuse of staff perks and expenses, nepotism and the wasting of taxpayers’ money, according to secret internal audits obtained by The Daily Telegraph.

A series of reports by the parliament’s internal auditor found that significant breaches of the rules were common among the 7,000 unelected officials who work for the EU’s assembly. Staff are allowed to authorise their own expenses and pay allowances to family members, despite the auditor warning of the risk of “conflicts of interest”.

The reports, covering three years, identify instances of officials being given double payments or allowances to which they are not entitled....

http://www.democracymovementsurrey.co.uk/news_divided/news.html#EUBudget

Ever since it started producing annual reports into European finances in 1994,
the Court of Auditors has failed to sign off the EU’s accounts because of
widespread irregularities, including fraud.


Last year, the
auditors’ annual report prompted the Government to warn that
the findings “seriously undermines the credibility of the EU’s financial
management” after the audit found that £89 billion of European spending was
“affected by material error”.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10306461/EU-auditors-must-tone-down-criticism-of-Brussels-spending-says-Herman-Van-Rompuy.html