LABOUR Cllr JAILED for 17 months After Committing Fraud To Win His Seat

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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Nigel Farage: 'Is Bleach a Disinfective?'

JUST now Nigel Farage refused to say if bleach was disinfective. He was responding to Piers Morgan on Breakfast TV. Piers had made the mistake of saying that Donald Trump had recommended that people take 'Disinfective or Bleach' to treat Covid-19.

Piers Morgan then asked him if bleach was an 'disinfective'! Nigel then accused him of playing games.

They were commenting on the US election as counting was taking place. Watch this space.

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WHO'S AFRAID OF SAM O'BRIEN?

Editorial comment:  This month it was brought to our attention that two live links had been taken down on the Rochdale Friends of Jeremy Corbyn Facebook page.  The links were to items on the NV Blog that had been put up as comments by Stefan Cholewka and led to posts critical of the establishment politics in Rochdale.  Since they were removed a local Rochdale activist, Sam O'Brien, has admitted that he threatened to withdraw from membership of the Facebook site, if the links were not removed.  

There are eleven administrators on the site and two have told NV that they were not consulted.  At this time we have not been able to contact the other administrators and it may be that they have not been consulted either, but Sam O'Brien has been kind enough to offer his thoughtful observations below.  We leave it our readership to judge the profound wisdom of his case.  We understand that any one of the administrators could remove content on the Rochdale Friends of Jeremy Corbyn Facebook page.

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Can this really be the language of the Enlightenment?

Editor's explanation:  Below is a recent e-mail from Sam 

O'Brien, a Rochdale trade unionist who prides himself on 

being an ardent 'anti-racist'.  Northern Voices does not 

believe in providing 'trigger warnings' on content 

as generally we anticipate our readers will have 

stern constitutions and to be intellectually robust.  

Yet some may easily find Mr. O'Brien's style 

surprising and even curious. 

Hello Brian,

'I didn't object. I said it was racist bollocks. I feel I am probably wasting my time but I will ty [sic] to spell it out to you. 

'You say in your article that Rochdale has been overrepresented by Muslim councillors and that has not been healthy for the democracy and moral status of the town. That is racist. Saying that there are too many Muslim councillors and that damages the democracy and morality of the town is racist bollocks. Complete and utter racist bollocks. Its the sort of racist bollocks that the BNP used to come out with, It is what the EDL say. Can you not hear yourself and how fucking offensive you are being?

'You go on to say that you are worried that the problems of the Indian sub-continent are becoming too much of an issue in the politics of the town. So the way Rochdale's councillor's vote is not influenced by whether they are left right or centre but by what is going on in Kashmir and Bangladesh. Racist crap. Again straight from the leaflets of the BNP to the pages of Northern Voices. 

'You implicitly blame all Muslims in Rochdale for propping up paedophile MP Cyril Smith. Racist bullshit. Was it not the white politicians who covered for him? Was it not the Met who disappeared the files on his abuse? The white chief executive who was willfully ignorant of the abuse? No somehow in your bizarre racist conspiracy theory world it was Muslims who were to blame. Shameful and disgraceful to publish this disgusting crap.

'I would love to know who it is on the admin team of the Friends of Jeremy Corbyn Facebook Page who thinks this is ok?

'If Stefan is standing by this racist bullshit he should consider his position within the trade union movement. 

'If this appears again on the Friends of Jeremy Corbyn page I will be leaving it.'

Sam

 

 NV Editor's Footnote [10th, August 2020]:   We would suggest that the decision of Rochdale's Friends of Jeremy Corbyn Facebook page administer who took down the contents of Stefan Cholewka comments without apparent debate, following Sam O'Brien's threat has behaved in a cowardly manner and by so doing has effectively brought the site into disrepute.  This is apparently being compounded by the fact that since then Stefan has been unable to post comments on the site.  Shortly we hope to be able to make a fuller statement on this matter explaining our own approach.

Editorial update [12/08/20]:

YESTERDAY a source close to the Rochdale Friends of Jeremy Corbyn Facebook page told us that comments by Stefan Cholewka have now been enabled again on the site.  This is clearly to be welcomed.

Meanwhile, Sam O'Brien has e-mailed us to say that 'All my comments are in a personal capacity' and not in any way related to any of his political or trade union affiliations. 

 

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Another Outing For Mr Nobody

by Les May

LISTENING to the news reports of the response by the different agencies one might have expected to have taken action earlier to shut down the Leicester ‘sweat shops’ I had a strong sense of deja vu; I’ve heard it all before.  I saw it in my own town a few years ago when a ‘marked register’, a precaution against voter fraud, went missing, possibly stolen, from a polling station.  There should have been a police investigation; there wasn’t.  A candidate who should have been informed that this had happened and wasn’t, tried to pursue the matter and found nobody would take responsibility.  He described it as the ‘sloping shoulders syndrome’. I saw it again when a Rochdale Labour councillor, Faisal Rana, who had voted twice in the election failed to declare his interests within the specified time.   Council officers wriggled and squirmed to avoid taking any action.   Once again nobody would take responsibility. It reached scandal proportions with regard to the Grenfell Tower fire.   It was Mr Nobody who was responsible yet again.

In Leicester it not even true to say the existence of the sweat shops and what was happening in the decrepit buildings that housed them was ‘an open secret’; it wasn’t even a secret!  A journalist had written an article for the Financial Times drawing attention to them.  In January 2020 Tory MP Andrew Bridgen had raised serious concerns over the conditions in garment factories.  Nobody took notice.

The agencies which might have been involved, HMRC to check no one was fiddling the furlough scheme, the Health and Safety Executive that social distancing by workers was being enforces, the Fire Service that the decrepit buildings were not a fire risk, the Police to check that no one was being forced to work in unsafe conditions against their will, do to some extent have the excuse that that they were no asked to intervene by the body that has ultimate responsibility for what goes on in Leicester, the local council. It seems Mr Nobody was responsible once again.

What is perhaps most disturbing about this is that responsibility for keeping the rate of transmission of the SarsCov2 virus which causes Covid19 disease is being placed in the hands of local councils.  Will Mr Nobody be responsible if they don’t do the job properly?  Figures released on Friday show that Rochdale where I live has 149 cases which is an infection rate of 68 per 100,000 of the population. (These figures are based on data for the fortnight up to 12 July)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-53448533

If you actually look at the advice being given by RMBC to bring down the rate of infection, limit visitors in your home to two, wear a face mask in public and keep two metres apart from at all times they are not really much different from the vague advice coming from Boris Johnson et al.  Where is the guidance about work?  About travel?   About eating out?  But should I really expect better from a council which feels it is acceptable that a councillor who admitted voting twice in the same election should be appointed to a committee which deals with planning applications?

http://democracy.rochdale.gov.uk/mgUserInfo.aspx?UID=6271

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Rochdale’s Collective Passion to Get Vote Out

Faisal ‘Two Votes’ Rana shows civic spirit

by Brian Bamford

Councillor Rana’s Poster Calls for Honesty & Integrity

MOST people in Rochdale didn’t even bother to vote in the local elections on the 3^rd, May this year.  But not so Labour Councillor Faisal Rana, a resident of Bronte Close in Norden, and until recently also at an address in the Spotland & Falinge ward, who was so keen to cast his vote that he managed to contrive to vote more than once. 
 

Councillor Rana told Sky News last Tuesday that:  ‘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.’

Voting 'Often' to Uphold Confidence in the Ballot

Northern Voices was tipped-off about a pending complaint to the authorities of possible unorthodox multiple voting in the Rochdale election on the 3^rd, May.  Since then the local police having first hesitated about pursuing the case, have discovered that Councillor Rana had entered into the election spirit by voting more than once.

Last Tuesday, the complainant Carl Faulkner, who stood as an independent candidate against Councillor Rana in Spotland and Falinge, gave the following statement to Northern Voices:

  

‘This is what we have with Labour councillor Faisal Rana, who actually expects people to believe his laughable claim that he mistakenly obtained two votes due to his ignorance of basic electoral law.

‘Labour councillor Faisal Rana did not innocently obtain his fraudulent second vote by “mistake”. Firstly, he purposely selected an address of convenience, where he did not live.  He then wilfully completed the registration process, which if answered honestly, is designed to prevent someone obtaining two votes. He then went on to apply for a postal vote.  At the subsequent election he carefully completed and returned that unlawfully obtained postal vote.

‘I informed the police of my suspicions on the day of the election. At the time, it was made clear to me that it was not something that would be investigated.  It was only because of my persistence that an investigation actually did commence some weeks later.’

Delivering 'HONESTY', 'INTEGRITY', & 'VISION'

Leader of Rochdale council, Labour's Allen Brett, addressing the issue of Councillor Rana told Sky TV:  'It is vital that councillors do all that they can to uphold the integrity of the democratic process.'

Well yes, indeed, and so Councillor Rana ran for Council on a conscientious platform of 'HONESTY, INTEGRITY and VISION', with the forethought, and creative vision to get in early; balloting from different addresses to place his postal votes.

And Labour's imaginative public spirited Councillor Rana is really spoilt for choice when it comes to addresses to claim a vote from, with rows of houses in the Rochdale Borough at his disposal to choose to claim his vote from; as anyone who seeks to cast their eyes over vast list of properties in his Register of Members Interests can see for themselves.

Council Leader Allen Brett is naturally disappointed 'in Councillor Rana's error because [as he says] he is a very talented and hardworking individual who shares our collective passion to improve our borough.'

Kill-joys & Representation of the People Act

The sad thing is that there are kill-joys in our midst who insist on side-constraints of the kind of creative passion promoted by Councillor Rana's inventiveness in spreading the voting habit.  As a consequence Greater Manchester Police gave statement:

'On Monday 13 August 2018 a 51-year-man was cautioned with engaging in an act at an election intending to deprive another of a vote contrary to sections 62A(1) and 168(1) of the Representations of the People Act 1983.'

Alas, the talented Councillor Rana's spirit of expanding the franchise falls foul of the Representations of the People Act 1983', and despite the general war cry of both Councillors Brett and Rana that it was all a dreadful mistake; in law it amounts to 'engaging in an act at an election intending to deprive another of a vote', and this is  'contrary to .... the Representation of the People Act 1983'.  

We politicians can waffle on as much as we want about voting 'often' or even twice 'by error' or 'by mistake', but the key words in the Act are the mens rea of 'intending to deprive'.

Northern Voices approached both Councillor Brett and Councillor Rana on Thursday (16th, August) before publication, Councillor Brett we were told is 'not in the office till Monday', and someone called 'Vicky' in the Council Leader's Office promised somebody called 'Dan' would get back to us, but we're still waiting for enlightenment, and Councillor Rana had a message put on his answer-phone, but 'Reply Came There None!'.

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Electoral Snags: Tower Hamlets & Rochdale

In the light of the recent report on ROCHDALE ONLINE about a complaint about the 2015 local elections in Rochdale, and the concerns about the possible election misleading reporting by the Conservative Party of expenses in connection with the deployment of a battle bus; it may be wise to publish here the report by Chris Skidmore about how to avoid electoral fraud:

This independent report makes recommendations about how the government can prevent electoral fraud in the UK.:

First published: Cabinet Office and Chris Skidmore MP

12 August 2016

Last updated:

27 December 2016,

Former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Sir Eric Pickles MP, was asked by the government last year to consider what further changes were needed to make the electoral system more secure. This was particularly in light of the 2015 Tower Hamlets election court judgment that saw the disqualification of the elected mayor for a number of corrupt and illegal practices.

Evidence has been gathered over the last year from local government, the police, academics and election experts.
A series of 50 recommendations are outlined in the report, including:

• clamping down on postal vote ‘harvesting’ by political activists
• piloting some form of identification at polling stations
• action to tackle the links between electoral fraud and immigration fraud
• stronger checks and balances against municipal corruption
  

Chris Skidmore MP, Minister for the Constitution, said:

I would like to thank Sir Eric Pickles for the work he has undertaken over the past year in producing this detailed and thorough report.

In order to ensure we have a democracy that works for everyone, the government is determined to ensure that the electoral register is as complete and accurate as possible. The introduction of Individual Electoral Registration has already begun to transform our registration system, increasing its accuracy and performance at the same time as seeing record levels of registration. We intend to continue to build on this success.

This report will be an important contribution to our fight against all types of fraud in the UK. We will look closely at the recommendations.

Sir Eric Pickles MP said:

Last year’s court ruling in Tower Hamlets was a wake-up call that state bodies need to do far more to stamp out corruption and restore public confidence. It was local residents who lost out from the crooked politicians who bullied them and wasted their money. The law must be applied equally and fairly to everyone. Integration and good community relations are undermined by the failure to uphold the rule of law and ensure fair play.

The terms of reference for Electoral Fraud Review included:

• examining what steps are necessary to stop voter registration fraud and error, postal voting fraud, impersonation, intimidation, bribery, treating and undue influence
• reviewing the role of councils, the police and the Electoral Commission in deterring, identifying and prosecuting fraud
• considering the recommendations of Richard Mawrey QC in his recent election court judgment on fraud in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets
• recommending to government what practical changes are needed to legislation, guidance and practice