Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman guilty of corrupt and illegal practices over electionWorld | 207368 hits | Apr 23 10:44 am | Posted by: N_Fiddledog Commentsview comments in forum Page 1 You need to be a member of CKA and be logged into the site, to comment on news. |
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Just as long as it has a happy ending like this one finally did, I guess.
(Although, I thought he should have gotten time in prison.)
Real 3rd world stuff from a 3rd world guy.
You know you're doing something really special when even the Labour Party kicks you out
and won't deal with you.
2) Rahman channelled millions of pounds in council grants to IFE front organisations and appointed a senior IFE figure as assistant chief executive of the council, though he was wholly unqualified for this senior post. Both the assistant chief executive and Rahman were subsequently removed from their jobs.
3) An extremist preacher was invited to speak in the council chamber and extremist literature, including audio tapes by the al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, was stocked in Tower Hamlets libraries.
4) In 2010, after a campaign including large numbers of fake signatures led by the IFE, Tower Hamlets was changed from having a conventional council leader to a far more personally powerful, directly-elected mayor. In secret filming, senior IFE activists described how they would �get one of our brothers� into the new post.
5) Rahman personally signed up entire families as sham members of the Labour Party to win selection as the Labour mayoral candidate. He was selected, but was then removed by Labour�s National Executive Committee, and subsequently expelled from the party.
6) Rahman won election anyway as an independent, on a tiny turnout, after his (Muslim) Labour opponent was smeared as a wife-beater and enemy of Islam in thousands of newsletters produced with Rahman�s full knowledge. The new mayor was said by his campaign manager to have a "strategic relationship" with the IFE, with �most� of his campaigners being �either Respect or IFE activists.�
7) Even though Tower Hamlets is only 34 per cent Muslim, Rahman appointed a 100 per cent Bangladeshi and Muslim cabinet. He has never appointed any non-Muslim to any cabinet post and has no non-Muslim councillors.
Rahman has given control over the council�s finances to Alibor Choudhury, a former employee of an IFE front organisation with a long track record of encounters with the police. Rahman has himself taken personal control of all grants over �1000.
9) Under Rahman and Choudhury, council grants have been diverted away from secular bodies serving the whole community to IFE fronts and to other groups serving largely the Muslim community. Several of these groups, the council�s scrutiny committee found, are new and without any track record. Several appear to be based in people's private homes. Several involve individuals with close personal connections to Rahman. (For a full account of Rahman�s Muslim grants favouritism, see here.)
10) Rahman has transferred valuable council properties to close personal associates at far less than their true market value, including a 10,000 square foot office building a stone�s throw from Canary Wharf which was sold for �875,000 to the man in charge of his election campaign website.
11) Key Rahman allies have been witnessed, and have not denied, engaging in a practice known as �vote-harvesting,� registering people for postal votes and then collecting their blank ballot papers.
12) Some of the supposed voters do not appear to exist. �Ghost� voters registered to empty properties or huge numbers of voters registered to small flats have been regular features of Tower Hamlets elections.
13) Rahman has presided over an atmosphere of menace and intimidation at council meetings. Phalanxes of Rahman supporters drafted in to the public galleries shout homophobic abuse at several key opponents of the mayor, who are gay. Rahman�s cabinet members, such as Alibor Choudhury, abuse their opponents as fascists.
14) Rahman has used council officers to hound and bully opposition councillors, spending tens of thousands of pounds of public money to make spurious, but time-consuming, legal attacks on them.
15) At council meetings, Rahman refuses to answer questions about any of these or most other issues, with officers saying that to do so would breach his human rights.
16) Rahman also refuses to engage with most other questioning. He has made almost no public appearances in this election campaign at any event where he would be required to answer questions.
17) Rahman largely ignores the non-Bengali media but pays tens of thousands of pounds of public money to UK-based Bengali-language TV stations - including �50,000 a year personally to one TV channel�s chief reporter. In return, they give him fawning coverage. The channels have been repeatedly censured by Ofcom, but it appears to make no difference.
18) Rahman has channelled further millions of taxpayers� money into an extensive cult of personality. He has a weekly newspaper delivered to all households at public expense, containing often as many as a dozen pictures or mentions of himself.
19) Rahman has had hundreds of copies of his own picture displayed at public expense on billboards, lampposts, and even council dustcarts (to comply with election law, most have recently been removed.)
20) Rahman has used public funds to send thousands of personal letters, again with his picture on them, to residents claiming credit for things which are not his doing, such as the Government-funded council housing refurbishment programme.
21) Rahman has been hostile or indifferent to the borough's non-Muslim heritage, threatening to close the local history library (reversed only after a storm of protest), selling off pubs and threatening them with closure, and attempting to dispose of a Henry Moore artwork whose form offended Islamic sensibilities. At the same time, he has created a new programme to channel hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money to (mainly Muslim) faith buildings.
22) Rahman�s cabinet member for education, Oliur Rahman, appeared on a public platform with a group campaigning for the �unacceptability of homosexuality.�
23) Rahman�s cabinet member for the environment, Shahed Ali, avoided �25,000 in tax by liquidating his restaurant business, then immediately reopening the restaurant under a new name. He boasts that he used the proceeds to buy a Porsche.
24) Rahman�s cabinet member for culture, Rania Khan, mocked gay people and published pictures of knives on her social networking site, saying: �I know it�s not ladylike, but I luv my weapons.�
25) Rahman�s key funder, Shiraj Haque, a restaurateur, has a criminal caution for selling counterfeit wine. He was sacked from his chairmanship of a council-sponsored festival after suspicions that it was being used as a front for illegal immigration, but was reappointed by Rahman. Despite being a millionaire who owns at least seven properties, Haque has been given subsidised social housing by the council.
26) Rahman has repeatedly given character references for convicted criminals, including a sex attacker.
27) Rahman charges taxpayers up to �60,000 a year for a Mercedes car and chauffeur, which he has used, among other purposes, to collect his dry cleaning. No other elected mayor, including Boris Johnson, has a limousine. He claims he has now given it up, but this appears to be only for the election period.
28) Rahman has also spent large sums of public money on taxis for himself, including one purported fare of �71 to travel a distance of 400 metres and another �28 fare from a local McDonald�s to his office.
29) Rahman is accused by the Government of practising �divisive community politics� and the �mismanagement of council staff and resources.�
30) Neither of the neighbouring boroughs, Hackney and Newham, will work with Rahman. The Labour mayor of Newham, Sir Robin Wales, describes Rahman as �very bad news� and as creating a form of apartheid in his area.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andre ... ould-know/
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/sh ... 92395.html
And this one's almost funny unless you consider the possibility the sort of harassment this English woman received at the hands of what were called "THEOs" (Tower Hamlets Enforcement Officers) was more a policy than a single incident.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/sh ... 92395.html
I'd have told that fucking mouth-breathing dickhead to go fuck himself.