A councillor once part of Lutfur Rahman’s corrupt administration at Tower Hamlets has today been sentenced to five months in prison for housing fraud.
The conviction means Shahed Ali is no longer eligible to remain a councillor after pleading guilty at Snaresbrook Crown Court.
He denied the charges against him for months, only to plead guilty at the last moment—which has brought condemnation today from Labour’s mayor John Biggs who took over last year when Rahman was barred from office.
Documents tabled in the court show that Cllr Ali has cost the local authority £70,000 in legal fees.
The cost would have been less than £4,000 had he pleaded guilty when he was first charged at Thames Magistrates’ Court on December 9 last year, the council points out.
Now a by-election is to be held in the Whitechapel ward which Ali represented—first for former MP George Galloway’s Respect Party in 2006 and later for Rahman’s now-barred Tower Hamlets First party after 2010.
The former councillor has been given a 22-week sentence under the 2006 Fraud Act for not disclosing information about his changed circumstances when applying for a council house.
Ali failed to notify the council of the change between the date he completed a housing application form and the date he accepted a council tenancy, while under a duty to do so. He failed to tell the authority that he owned two properties.
His disqualification from office runs five years—just like the ban on disgraced ex-Mayor Rahman who was barred last year by the High Court for election fraud and malpractice in office and his Tower Hamlets First party being removed from the register. Ali is the second member of Rahman’s group to be jailed for fraud.
