By jaybeecher Posted on January 20, 2021
CHAUDHARY Mohammed Iqbal, 51, told election officials that he lived in Ilford so that he could trick them into thinking he met the legal requirements to run for a seat in the constituency. In doing so, he committed electoral fraud.
Mr Chaudhary then broke the law yet again after his questionable election win in 2018, by continuing to hold that seat of office based on his lies, and to collect thousands of pounds in expenses payments.
When police began to investigate, Iqbal encouraged his tenant Kristina Stankeviciute to lie on his behalf and tell officers that he lived in a converted living room at the Ilford property.
Miss Stankeviciute has since left the country and a European warrant for her arrest was issued in December last year.
Iqbal had given multiple false addresses in his attempts to run for local office and successfully sat as a Labour councillor for more than two years, claiming more than £18,000 in expenses and allowances.
The former councillor pleaded guilty to three counts of making false statements in candidate nomination papers and one count of perverting the course of justice.
Iqbal, who has since moved to Preston, appeared at Southwark Crown Court earlier this month and was sentenced to a total of 17 months in prison.
He was also ordered to pay prosecution costs of £10,422.54, compensation to Redbridge Council of £10,000 for the by-election costs and compensation to Redbridge Council of £18,368 for the allowances paid to him and will not be allowed to run for office for at least five years.
EDITORIAL FOOTNOTE:
A Fashion for Fraud: How many more cases?
This case seems to have some similarities to the Rochdale case in which Faisal Rana was cautioned in 2018 for voting twice in the local elections. Some feel that the now Rochdale Labour Councillor Rana was let off lightly by the authorities. His party and the Rochdale council allowed him to remain in office despite the scandal.
At the time, in 2018, Councillor Rana told Sky News:
‘I have accepted a police caution for an electoral offence, which relates to me casting separate votes for two different wards in two different Constituencies (Spotland and Falinge, and Norden Ward) in the local elections earlier this year.
‘I legally registered my votes by providing my genuine national insurance number, date of birth and addresses and when I received these through the post I thought it would have been OK and that is why they issued me two ballots for two constituencies.
‘I did not realise this was an offence and misinterpreted the rule that says it is possible to vote in two different electoral areas.
‘As soon as this was brought to my attention I went for a voluntary interview at local police station and co-operated with police fully in this regard.’
The trouble is that Faisal Rana obtained postal votes which involved him in a seemingly illegal application, and this may yet still come back to bite him. Indeed compared to CHAUDHARY Mohammed Iqbal who has now moved to Preston; Cllr. Faisal Rana has had a charmed life rising to the top in the Labour Party despite admitting to election fraud. But then againn Rochdale's authorities overlooked the the ashortcomings of Cyril Smith for decades.
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1 comment:
What electoral cheat Faisal Rana fails to mention, is that in order to obtain a second postal vote, he lied about being a resident at an address where he did not live.
On the basis of this wilful lie, he then arranged for himself to be provided with a second postal vote - an act punishable by a prison sentence of up to two years.
The mystery here is why the police offered him a caution for a less serious electoral offence (voting twice), wwhen that lesser offence could only have been committed after he first committed the most serious of all voting offences - that of obtaining a postal vote that he was not entitled to receive...
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