Month: December 2019

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EXCLUSIVE

Hard-left politician George Galloway has evaded potential criminal charges – because an alleged electorial illegality took place longer ago than a six-year cut-off limit. Last evening he heavily failed to be elected to Parliament in a central-England constituency that last time voted for the Labour Party candidate.

He could also have been expelled from Parliament should he have won his campaign to return as an MP – this time for West Bromwich East, which had previously been the seat of Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson.

World News & Features (WNF) has evidence of credit card payments that indicate amounts were paid for running past election campaigns that legally had to be reported but were not.

Other allegations include …..

Each allegation, if proven, could lead to criminal prosecution and could spell the end for the radical politician’s long and controversy-filled career as a Member of Parliament and as a radical political figure. 

The most serious allegation was that Galloway borrowed over 32,000 pounds for election expenses and had still not paid back many thousands of pounds he owed from these loans. He claimed these were mainly donations – but donations or loans of this size needed to be reported to the regulators of the election or to the parliamentary oversight body.  They were not.

Another accusation, presented to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) was that an employment rip-off has cost the taxpayer thousands of pounds.  These allegations have come to light in an investigation by the independent news agency, World News & Features (WNF).

Documents have emerged that he failed to report loans or gifts of more than £20,000 in election-related expenses from Ayesha Bajwa, his onetime Parliamentary aide.

Galloway, 65, is currently fighting to become an MP again – …. years after losing a bitter campaign to retain a Parliamentary seat in Bradford West.  In April 2012 he had won a by-election there under the banner of the hard-left Respect Party against Labour, which had expelled him nine years earlier.

Bajwa’s allegation had come in a court document claiming that, in the months before the 2010 General Election, he had borrowed the money.   

In a statement responding to the allegations, the MP said he was not aware whether such payments had been made or not. 

In terms of the Electoral Administration Act of 2006, all loans for the support of election campaigns must be declared to the Electoral Commission.  The Commission has told WNF it has no record of Galloway or the Respect Party having registered any such donation or loan.  

Bajwa, who was paid a salary by the taxpayer as his Parliamentary Assistant from 2007 until he lost an east London seat in 2010, provided a list, in her High Court papers, of what she says were payments she made to Galloway for his election campaigning. She also supplied another list of what she says are refunds made to her. They appear to indicate that much of the money has not been repaid. 

From March 2007 to May 2010 she says payments she made for his election campaigns and activities, including hiring campaign buses and printing election material, amounted to £32,391.44. [She also maintains that, when she said she was running out of funds for further loans to him, Galloway asked her to borrow money – and that in 2011 she took out a £25,000 loan from Lloyds TSB Bank to pay Galloway’s VAT and tax liabilities.]

In total Bajwa claimed that Galloway still owed her over 120,000 pounds in money she had loaned him for various purposes between 2007 and 2012.  In court papers obtained by WNF with permission of the High Court, Galloway states that Bajwa was having an “intimate” relationship with him – kept secret, he states, partly because he was already officially married to another woman.  The bulk of the money provided by Bajwa to him was not a series of loans, he asserts, but was meant as a gift or was for household expenses.

Bajwa denied there was an intimate relationship.  Despite having at first vigorously denied the claims, Galloway eventually settled the matter out of court for an undisclosed sum.

However the court papers reveal Galloway admitted borrowing £49,914 to help pay for a London home he was buying.  In a Defence statement, he agreed to pay that sum back to Bajwa by bank transfer in June 2014 – more than four-and-a-half years after the loan was made. In the court papers Galloway maintained he had been under no obligation to pay it back until the house was sold.

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The Parliamentary aide who succeeded her, Aisha Ali-Khan, 34, had also, separately, claimed she was owed money for items she purchased on Galloway’s behalf – like a £600 iPad for her use as his Parliamentary Assistant, and 474 pounds for hiring a registrar to officiate at Galloway’s marriage ceremony.

An attempt by Galloway to destroy her reputation was rejected by the High Court, which awarded damages to Ms Ali Khan for libel last year.

Galloway, aged 61, has consistently engendered controversy during a political career that has spanned for more than a quarter of a century.  Besides courting Saddam Hussein, he has been thrown out of the Labour Party, suspended from parliament, and famously branded a laughing stock for pretending to be a milk-licking cat on Big Brother. 

However, this did not appear to hamper his political career. And, far overshadowing his £67,000 annual Parliamentary income, his notoriety helped him make a declared income exceeding 250,000 pounds a year from lucrative contracts to present television and radio programmes – the two main income-sources being paid by companies owned by or associated with Iran or its militant affiliates (Press TV and Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen TV).  [Iran has for years been under trade sanctions imposed by Britain, the EU and the United Nations over its nuclear programme.]

After losing the Bethnal Green and Bow seat he was contesting in the 2010 general election, [he had been MP for a different seat ] he bounced back two years later with a shock landslide by-election victory in the formerly safe Labour seat of Bradford West, which he then lost heavily to Labour in 2015.

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In other blows to the beleaguered Galloway:

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority announced in 2015 that it was investigating allegedly illegal overpayments that Galloway was claiming for her Parliamentary salary – for which the taxpayer was to pay her 30,000 pounds a year. His total wage bill in 2012 and in the years preceding it exceeded £100,000 annually.  His use of parliamentary funds was then referred to the police by the parliamentary expenses watchdog, following a complaint by his former assistant Aisha Ali-Khan.

She had lodged an official complaint alleging that while she worked for Mr Galloway she was made to spend a large amount of time on non-parliamentary duties.  That  included underwear shopping, making preparations for his wedding and helping the Viva Palestina charity.

Ms Ali-Khan’s lawyers claimed that Galloway had an obligation to use parliamentary funds to pay staff exclusively for associated functions and activities. The directors of the charity founded by Galloway – Viva Palestina – were suspended when they failed to make any financial returns. 

AND HERE IS ANOTHER WAY TO WRITE THIS STORY:

EXCLUSIVE

Hard-left politician George Galloway faces potential criminal charges whether he wins or loses his campaign this week after documents emerged that he failed to report loans or gifts of more than £20,000 in election-related expenses from Ayesha Bajwa, his onetime Parliamentary aide.

He could also be expelled from parliament should he win.

World News & Features (WNF) has evidence of credit card payments that appear to indicate amounts were paid for running past election campaigns that legally had to be reported but were not.

Each allegation, if proven, could lead to criminal prosecution and could spell the end for the radical politician’s long and controversy-filled career as a Member of Parliament and as a radical political figure. 

The most serious allegation was that Galloway borrowed over 32,000 pounds for election expenses and had still not paid back many thousands of pounds he owed from these loans. He claimed these were mainly donations – but donations or loans of this size needed to be reported to the regulators of the election or to the parliamentary oversight body.  They were not.

Receipts show that Ensign Bus Company, based in Essex, hired out buses and drivers to ‘The George Galloway Election Fund’ and was paid £10,800 by his former secretary and alleged lover Ayesha Bajwa in 2010 using her credit card [whose payment slips we have seen].  A leaflet distribution company in 2010 received £7,212.15 for “George Galloway MP” through a private credit card. [We have its number – it is irrelevant whose card it was, in that it was not declared anyway.]

Under the strict rules of the Electoral Commission, set up by Parliament, all loans or donations made in the same calendar year must be reported if their combined value exceeds £7,500.  Loans or donations made to Members of Parliament must be reported if they exceed £1,500.

 While not denying the allegations, Galloway has made a written statement saying he had not seen any “corroborating documentation” to prove that Bajwa had made the election payments. He said: “If they were made then it seems likely that expenditures were made on behalf of the Respect Party and would count as a donation to the party. However if Ms Bajwa did not inform the party of them then any failure to report them must lie with her and not with either me or the Respect party.”

However, the electoral rules contradict this.  They state that it is the political party’s legal duty to register any donations or loans, not the person making the donation or loan. Galloway was often pictured on the buses for which Bajwa says she paid, and was heavily featured in the leaflets.

Another accusation, presented to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) was that an employment rip-off has cost the taxpayer thousands of pounds.  These allegations have come to light in an investigation by the independent news agency, World News & Features (WNF).

Galloway, 65, is currently fighting to become an MP again- two years after losing a bitter campaign to retain a Parliamentary seat in Bradford West.  In April 2012 he had won a by-election there under the banner of the hard-left Respect Party against Labour, which had expelled him nine years earlier.

Bajwa’s allegation had come in a court document claiming that, in the months before the 2010 General Election, he had borrowed the money.   

In a statement responding to the allegations, the MP said he was not aware whether such payments had been made or not. 

In terms of the Electoral Administration Act of 2006, all loans for the support of election campaigns must be declared to the Electoral Commission.  The Commission has told WNF it has no record of Galloway or the Respect Party having registered any such donation or loan.  

Bajwa, who was paid a salary by the taxpayer as his Parliamentary Assistant from 2007 until he lost an east London seat in 2010, provided a list, in her High Court papers, of what she says were payments she made to Galloway for his election campaigning. She also supplied another list of what she says are refunds made to her. They appear to indicate that much of the money has not been repaid. 

From March 2007 to May 2010 she says payments she made for his election campaigns and activities, including hiring campaign buses and printing election material, amounted to £32,391.44. [She also maintains that, when she said she was running out of funds for further loans to him, Galloway asked her to borrow money – and that in 2011 she took out a £25,000 loan from Lloyds TSB Bank to pay Galloway’s VAT and tax liabilities.]

WNF has managed to track down two of those loans. The receipts show that Ensign Bus Company, based in Essex, hired out buses and drivers to ‘The George Galloway Election Fund’ and was paid £10,800 by Bajwa in 2010 using her credit card

[whose payment slips we have seen]

.  A leaflet distribution company in 2010 received £7,212.15 for “George Galloway MP” through a private credit card. [NOTE: We. have its number – it is irrelevant whose it was, in that it was not declared anyway.]

Under the strict rules of the Electoral Commission, set up by Parliament, all loans or donations made in the same calendar year must be reported if their combined value exceeds £7,500.  Loans or donations made to Members of Parliament must be reported if they exceed £1,500.

 While not denying the allegations, Galloway has made a written statement saying he had not seen any “corroborating documentation” to prove that Bajwa had made the election payments. He said: “If they were made then it seems likely that expenditures were made on behalf of the Respect Party and would count as a donation to the party. However if Ms Bajwa did not inform the party of them then any failure to report them must lie with her and not with either me or the Respect party.”

However, the electoral rules contradict this.  They state that it is the political party’s legal duty to register any donations or loans, not the person making the donation or loan. Galloway was often pictured on the buses for which Bajwa says she paid, and was heavily featured in the leaflets.

In total Bajwa claimed that Galloway still owed her over 120,000 pounds in money she had loaned him for various purposes between 2007 and 2012.  In court papers obtained by WNF with permission of the High Court, Galloway states that Bajwa was having an “intimate” relationship with him – kept secret, he states, partly because he was already officially married to another woman.  The bulk of the money provided by Bajwa to him was not a series of loans, he asserts, but was meant as a gift or was for household expenses.

Bajwa denied there was an intimate relationship.  Despite having at first vigorously denied the claims, Galloway eventually settled the matter out of court for an undisclosed sum.

However the court papers reveal Galloway admitted borrowing £49,914 to help pay for a London home he was buying.  In a Defence statement, he agreed to pay that sum back to Bajwa by bank transfer in June 2014 – more than four-and-a-half years after the loan was made. In the court papers Galloway maintained he had been under no obligation to pay it back until the house was sold.

**************************

The Parliamentary aide who succeeded her, Aisha Ali-Khan, now 36, had also, separately, claimed she was owed money for items she purchased on Galloway’s behalf – like a £600 iPad for her use as his Parliamentary Assistant, and 474 pounds for hiring a registrar to officiate at Galloway’s marriage ceremony.

An attempt by Galloway to destroy her reputation was rejected by the High Court, which awarded damages to Ms Ali Khan for libel in 2017.

Galloway has consistently engendered controversy during a political career that has spanned for more than a quarter of a century.  Besides courting Saddam Hussein, he has been thrown out of the Labour Party, suspended from parliament, and famously branded a laughing stock for pretending to be a milk-licking cat on Big Brother. 

However, this did not appear to hamper his political career. And, far overshadowing his £67,000 annual Parliamentary income, his notoriety helped him make a declared income exceeding 250,000 pounds a year from lucrative contracts to present television and radio programmes – the two main income-sources being paid by companies owned by or associated with Iran or its militant affiliates (Press TV and Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen TV).  [Iran has for years been under trade sanctions imposed by Britain, the EU and the United Nations over its nuclear programme.]

After losing the Bethnal Green and Bow seat he was contesting in the 2010 general election, [he had been MP for a different seat ] he bounced back two years later with a shock landslide by-election victory in the formerly safe Labour seat of Bradford West, which he then lost heavily to Labour in 2015.

************************************ 

In other blows to the beleaguered Galloway:

• The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority announced in 2015 that it was investigating allegedly illegal overpayments that Galloway was claiming for her Parliamentary salary – for which the taxpayer was to pay her 30,000 pounds a year. His total wage bill in 2012 and in the years preceding it exceeded £100,000 annually.  It subsequently announced the investigation had been handed over to the police.

• The directors of the charity founded by Galloway – Viva Palestina – were suspended when they failed to make any financial returns.  The charity remains in limbo.