As the East London Advertiser reports, Shelina Akhtar, who was el;ected in May 2010 for Labour before being kicked out a few months later when she backed Independent Mayor Lutfur Rahman, has been jailed for 16 weeks for benefit fraud.
That’s more than the three month threshhold that in law now disqualifies her from holding elected office.
I don’t know what was her mitigation, who provided any character witnesses, or whether the judge decided to make an example of her because of her position. (I’m on holiday and I’ll have to rely on your reports!)
Here’s the initial ELA account.
Disgraced Tower Hamlets councillor Shelina Akhtar has been jailed after admitting three counts of benefit fraud.
The Spitalfields & Banglatown councillor, 33, of Blackwall way, Poplar was jailed for 16 weeks at Snaresbrook Crown Court this morning after admitting three counts of dishonestly claiming housing benefit and council tax at a hearing last month.
Now for the by-election, which will be a real test of whether Labour can mobilise and command support.
UPDATE 6pm
The East London Advertiser has more details of the court hearing here and copied below:
A Tower Hamlets councillor is still in her job after receiving a three and a half month jail sentence today for benefit fraud.
Shelina Akhtar, a councillor for Spitalfields and Banglatown ward, was given a 16 week custodial sentence, half of which she must serve in prison, at Snaresbrook Crown Court, this morning.
The sentence came after she had pleaded guilty to three counts of failing to notify a change in circumstances, when claiming housing and council tax benefits for a property in Blackwall Way, Poplar.
The court heard that Cllr Akhtar sub-letted her housing association flat for £1,000 a month without permission, while living with her parents and continuing to claim housing and council tax benefits. She also referred a tenant to another housing association flat registered to her sister, Hazera Akhtar, the court was told, and another £1,000 in monthly rent for that flat also went into to the councillor’s bank account. Court charges against her sister were dropped.
Cllr Akhtar falsely claimed a total of £1,085 in housing benefit and £29 in Council Tax during two periods between November 2009 and September 2010.
Prosecuting barrister Michelle Fawcett told the court: “Cllr Akhtar deliberately defrauded the council only months after being elected to the very same local authority despite having been convicted of a similar offence already. She sublet her flat for sheer profit.”
Defence barrister Edward McKiernan urged the judge not make an example of Cllr Akhtar because of her position.
“We have a lot of testimony to say she has been very active in the community and did a lot of hard work as a councillor,” he told the court. He also pointed out that Cllr Akhtar accepted what she did was “unacceptable” and that she had repaid all the money wrongly claimed in benefits to the council.
But sentencing her judge John Lafferty told Cllr Akhtar she had put the reputation of the benefit system in danger by making “hard working” people pay for her benefits.
“We have a benefit system for those who through no fault of their own fall on hard times.”
“You deliberately defrauded the system. As a prominent person you should have lived up to the highest standards.”
Cllr Aktar stood as a Labour councillor for Spitalfields and Banglatown ward but later defected to become an independent and is counted as belonging to Tower Hamlet’s Mayor Lutfur Rahman’s inner circle.
Under the Local Government Act a councillors is automatically disqualified from office if a custodial sentence of more than three months is received.
In a statement the council said: “But that disqualification does not take effect until the opportunity for appeal has expired, which is 28 days after sentence.”
Trial by Jeory 
Justice served on a plate. Our Mayor Lutfur rahman did ask her to resign, obviously he has no connections with her.
maybe lutfur will take the next council meeting to HM prisons,as he needs her vote. Or He might say her Human rights has been trampled on
Yes, but was she made to repay her ill gotten gains?
No she was not
Two questions
1) What price honour and integrity?
2) Do Judges make examples of Councillors when they commit fraud?
How do you compare the “the social stigma in her community which would attach to a single woman living alone” to the SHAME AND CAREER IMPLICATIONS of:
* being convicted of fraud from the public purse,
* being jailed for sixteen weeks (and I expect the prison population are unlikely to look kindly on politicians who steal)
* bringing the Council into disrepute
* being disqualified from public office
Her explanation about stigma comes from the report in Ted’s previous post Shelina Akhtar: I pleaded guilty but I didn’t do it (honest, guv)
It’s my personal view that anybody who has previously committed and been convicted of benefits fraud (as ex-Councillor Akhtar had) has to be extremely stupid if he or she does it again and then expects to get away with it.
I have absolutely no idea whether or not a single Bengali women living on her own is stigmatised by her local community. (Would somebody like to comment about this?) However if her retrospective explanation has even a shred of truth to it, then surely her community needs to reflect on the outcome of this trial and her conviction.
On the second question, I think it’s highly likely that Judges take an extremely dim view of individuals who hold public office and then steal from the public purse. It’s as bad as it gets.
I think any other Tower Hamlets Councillors who’ve been “economical with the truth” (ie lied on claim forms for expenses or benefits or any other way of receiving public money) should be very worried indeed.
Once upon a time it was a stigma for a single Bengali girl to be living on her own. However, as with everything in life, times have moved on. Most girls are going past 30 without having been married but needing their own space. And it’s so common that no-body, except those with too much time on their hands, is interested. As with communities all over the world. You should hear how they’re talking now, Shelina.
Still is a stigma, from my experience most girls are married by 30 and most of those who aren’t live with their parents. very few live on their own unless they are a divorcee with children. Even some of the divorcees want to live with their parents. sounds stifling but it is what it is.
“…Cllr Akhtar explained that legal advice has prevented her from countering the negative presumptions and false rumours that are currently being spread in the media. She told us that she will be in a position to explain some of the misunderstandings presented as fact in the press soon…Jan 19th 2012…”
Has Ms Akhtar’s explanation been forthcoming yet?
see the East London News dated 19th January http://www.eastlondonnews.com/shelina-akhtar-will-the-truth-emerge/
Like Ted I’m still at a loss to understand the point of telling stories about what happened AFTER the court case when she had just pleaded guilty to the charge.
Did she tell the same story in Court?
Did she state the truth as per her oath in court?
I also wonder what’s happened to the ELN survey of Councillors……
I wrote the Shelina Akhtar story. I also asked the councillors to take part in a survey to see who else lived in housing association homes, if they were subletting them and whether they also claimed benefits. As I said previously I quit the unpaid job I had at the East London News a couple of weeks ago. I feel I have to make a response now that the trial is over.
Shelina Akhtar story
One day during her trial Shelina Akhtar came into the ELN office completely taking me by surprise because I had been trying to write something about it and had already sent the questionnaire to the councillors. Akhtar recognised me and looked as surprised as I was by our apparently chance meeting there.
She claimed she had come in because she was collecting copies of local newspapers to see what they were saying about her. Perhaps she had come in meaning to talk with someone else and not expecting to see me, I don’t know.
I told her I thought it would be a good idea for us to speak suggesting to her she could speak to us exclusively and perhaps put her side of events forward because, as yet, there had not been a statement from her. I said I would understand if she was not prepared to talk.
She appeared reluctant at first but then began talking to me. I asked her if the stories were true about her subletting her swan flat and living at Toynbee Street. She said she was not able to talk about it.
I then asked her about her sister’s flat that she was also supposedly subletting and she looked quite wounded at that and declined to talk about it either. I then asked why, if it were not so, was she found to be using two different addresses.
A rattled looking Akhtar then gave me the story about the stigma associated with a woman living alone, her circumstances after her father’s death and her mother’s illness which made her the main breadwinner and head of her family responsible for her younger siblings and so on. After this she looked noticibly anxious and upset.
I asked her about the benefits she was said to have been illegally claiming and she told me they were “not very much” and, anyway, she was confident the charges would soon be dropped.
I then rather clumsily asked her how she thought she would manage life as a lag in Holloway Prison. With that she became quite animated and I remember clearly her telling me,
“I’m not going to jail. That isn’t going to happen!”
She then spoke in Bengali to a colleague at some length and after they had finished talking she turned to me and said that she could not speak any more before adding “but there are a lot of lies being reported” in the press and many of the charges against “her had been dropped and more are being dropped all the time.”
She left the office and I then tried to write something which told that story.
Clearly I was deceived by her defensive reaction to questions about her subletting those properties. At the time I attributed her strong reaction to be offence she had taken at my prying into the domestic arrangements within her family. At that time, I – like it seems all the other reporters – did not know about the two grand per month she was raking in for her and her sisters housing association flats.
I was never seeking to defend her and to my great anger the story I wrote with many qualifying paragraphs was later sub-edited so the tone more partial.
It must now be quite clear – she deserves to go to prison, absolutely.
A follow up question which begs asking must be how and why did those Akhtar sisters get those housing association flats? Was it through friends in high places?
Now – Regarding the councillor survey
I was still working on this when I quit. I don’t know who else had written in by the end of the day when I left but I recall about twenty of the fifty or so councillors had written back with a response by the time I went. If I recall correctly, the respondents were almost all coming from Labour councillors and included all the big names save Helal Abbas writing back – and he cannot respond because of legal issues regarding him and that paper. P. Golds and S. Eaton also responding on behalf of the Tory Group and the one Lib Dem respectively.
The detail showed some Labour councillors do quite legitimately live in social housing and all those who replied, Labour, Tory and Lib Dem denied ever subletting social housing or claiming benefits they were not entitled to while serving as a councillor.
At the time I left there were no responses to any of the questions from either the Respect or the Independent councillors and I did ask every councillor to respond in two separate emails. Maybe they have responded since or will yet.
I’m afraid she isn’t an ex-councillor yet. Any councillor jailed for over three months is disqualified 28 days after their sentencing (which would be 5 March in this case), but if they appeal against their sentence then the disqualification does not start until the appeal is decided. [Section 80(5) of the Local Government Act 1972]
Well there was the Poplar Rates Rebellion in 1921 when thirty councillors were sent to prison (24 men to Brixton; 6 women to Holloway.)
The ladies were sent down to Brixton by taxi for the council meetings!
@David Boothroyd. Presumably while she is in gaol and remains a councillor, she can a second home allowance and any other expenses she can invent?
No councillors anywhere have ever got ‘second home allowances’.
As I read the council’s allowances scheme, she will still get the basic allowance; payment is not made to councillors who are suspended by the Standards committee but there’s no mention of councillors who are sent to gaol.
http://moderngov.towerhamlets.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=21465
Correction : between “can” and “home” read “claim”
Very interesting.
You prompted me to take a look at the Act says
Section 80(5) of the Local Government Act 1972 states
(5) For the purposes of subsection (1)(d) above, the ordinary date on which the period allowed for making an appeal or application with respect to the conviction expires or, if such an appeal or application is made, the date on which the appeal or application is finally disposed of or abandoned or fails by reason of the non-prosecution thereof shall be deemed to be the date of the conviction.
However, given the scope for debate I guess it’s maybe worth quoting the whole of the relevant part of the Act – with the relevant sections highlighted in bold below
_________________________________________________
Extracts from the LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT 1972 – Part V (as amended)
Disqualifications for election and holding office as a member of a local authority
Local Government Act 1972: Disqualifications for election and holding office as a member of local authority
80. Disqualifications for election and holding office as member of local authority.
(1) Subject to the provisions of section 81 below, a person shall be disqualified for being elected or being a member of a local authority if he –
(a) holds any paid office or employment (other than the office of chairman, vice-chairman or deputy chairman or, in the case of a local authority which are operating executive arrangements which involve a leader and cabinet executive, the office of executive leader or member of the executive) appointments or elections to which are or may be made or confirmed by the local authority or any committee or sub-committee of the authority or by a joint committee or National Park authority on which the authority are represented or by any person holding any such office or employment; or
(b) is the subject of a bankruptcy restrictions order or interim order;
c) [This has been removed and no longer applies]
(d) has within five years before the day of election or since his election been convicted in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man of any offence and has had passed on him a sentence of imprisonment (whether suspended or not) for a period of not less than three months without the option of a fine; or
(e) is disqualified for being a member of the relevant council under Part III of the Representation of the People Act 1983, and in this paragraph “the relevant council” means the council of the county or district in which is comprised the area for which charter trustees are established by any statutory instrument made under Part II of the Local Government Act 1992.
(2) Subject to the provisions of section 81 below, a paid officer of a local authority who is employed under the direction of –
(a) a committee or sub-committee of the authority any member of which is appointed on the nomination of some other local authority; or
(b) a joint board, joint authority, joint waste authority or joint committee on which the authority are represented and any member of which is so appointed; shall be disqualified for being elected or being a member of that other local authority.
(2AA) A paid member of staff of the Greater London Authority who is employed under the direction of a joint committee the membership of which includes –
(a) one or more persons appointed on the nomination of the Authority acting by the Mayor, and
(b) one or more members of one or more London borough councils appointed to the committee on the nomination of those councils, shall be disqualified for being elected or being a member of any of those London borough councils.
(3) Subsection (1)(a) shall have effect in relation to a teacher in a school maintained by the local authority who does not hold an employment falling within that provision as it has effect in relation to a teacher in such a school who holds such an employment.
(5) For the purposes of subsection (1)(d) above, the ordinary date on which the period allowed for making an appeal or application with respect to the conviction expires or, if such an appeal or application is made, the date on which the appeal or application is finally disposed of or abandoned or fails by reason of the non- prosecution thereof shall be deemed to be the date of the surcharge or conviction.
This comes from http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/electoral_commission_pdf_file/0005/87404/LG-Forms-Final-Interactive.pdf
What I couldn’t see was the section of the Local Government Act which states that a Council cannot hold its own investigation of what happened and determine what it sees fit as the appropriate outcome PRIOR to the outcome of any Court Case. Can anybody quote chapter and verse on that?
Also – having read the Electoral Commission stuff, it did occur to me to wonder which address she put on her councillor nomination form – but maybe I’m being too picky?
Is she actually in jail now?
See BBC News website – Tower Hamlets Councillor Shelina Akhtar sacked after being jailed for benefit fraud
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16914477
See ELA – Tower Hamlets councillor still in office despite being jailed for benefit fraud (Monday, February 6, 2012 4:20 PM)
http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/news/tower_hamlets_councillor_still_in_office_despite_being_jailed_for_benefit_fraud_1_1200713
@James Frankcom (sorry the site had run out of ‘Reply’ options).
Interesting to read your full account of the encounter with Ms Akhtar.
I’m not a lawyer but I would have thought that her defence lawyer would have been tearing their hair out at the fact that she was talking to a journalist and commenting about her case and her story while the trial was underway. Even if aspects of it were not sub judice it is a delicate line to tread.
Not your fault for asking the questions – it’s hers for not having good enough judgement to refer you to her lawyer for all statements.
And thanks to You couldn’t make it up for reinforcing the comment that I made when she was found guilty – that the social stigma of being a criminal should far outweigh the stigma of being a single woman living alone. There was an excellent comment from a poster called ‘Bengali Girl’ in the same list of comments, complaining about other Bengali women who use the ‘old chestnut’ (her words) of community gossip to hide behind and deeply critical of Ms Akhtar. Well done that woman!
Thanks eastendersscriptwriterscouldn’tmakeitup
I remembered reading that comment from the poster called ‘Bengali Girl’ and your own comment and took a steer from both of those for my first comment above
@ James Frankcom (too)
Yes, thanks for your account of the ELN interview – but some small queries: you say that Shelina Akhtar, who knows you, seemed surprised to see you at the ELN offices. Why would she not expect to see you when you had already sent out the questionnaire to Cllrs from there/under your name, and you had been publishing your articles for ELN since May 2011? This is your first article for ELN?
http://www.eastlondonnews.com/th-labour-set-for-new-leadership/
Surely she knew you might be in the office, whatever reason she went in there (and her excuse does not ring true when she could just check online what was being written about her in the local press) and also after you had sent out your questionnaire?
Also, the “colleague” she suddenly talks to in Bengali at some length before giving you those last quotes and leaving. Is this a colleague of hers (not a former colleague of yours at the ELN)…and this colleague must have come in with her to the ELN offices?
@ Nomouse – the answers to your questions are; 1) It was far from my first article, I had submitted several articles each month since March 2010 when I began writing for the paper – some were written under my name others came from “ELN”. I usually worked from home rather than in the office but that week I decided to work from the ELN office. Also, I had only sent the questionnaire out a couple of hours before she turned up so perhaps she had not checked her council email account because she was out and about that day collecting papers among other things. As I said, I don’t know her motives for coming to the office and can only take her explanation of collecting local newspapers to monitor their coverage of her at face value; 2) this colleague was a colleague of mine at the newspaper who happened to be in the office at the same time as me and was as surprised to see her arrive there as I was.
@James Frankcom – thanks for your explanations. I can imagine you and your ELN colleague were surprised by Cllr Akhtar’s visit but don’t know why she looked surprised at seeing you when she knows you and you had been working for the ELN since March 2010. That’s nearly 2 years! (Who did she expect to see in the East London News office….Andrew Gilligan?….other suggestions on a postcard to….)
She looked surprised. All I can say is what I saw. I cannot mind-read. Maybe you can 😉
Re-read this: ‘Defence barrister Edward McKiernan urged the judge not make an example of Cllr Akhtar because of her position’. !! What planet does McKiernan come from?People, understand that it is exactly her position that she must be made an example of!! And linked to this we ought to be publicly questioning why to controversially elected (20%) Lutfur Rahman did not speak out against her conduct in the past and why she was ever permitted to become a councillor with an earlier conviction??!!
@ James Frankcom
Odder and odder. A recidivist criminal councillor whom you know from when she was your candidate for your party in your ward, walks into your newspaper office and you are surprised, she is surprised and your co-worker is surprised. But after the mutual shock and surprise, she sits down and gives her former Labour Party colleague and established ELN journalist an exclusive interview.
Then you write here on the Full Council meeting (having left the ELN after your interview with Akhtar) and do a “Bosh” on Councillor ‘Cane-em’ Chaudhury while citing the Poplar Rates Rebellion councillors. Doesn’t that just stick in your craw? Cllr Chaudhury’s thousands of pounds of ‘expenses’ airbrushed out of your account and the sacrifice of a councillor’s life after imprisonment, drawn as a parallel. What hypocrisy.
“How shall we help the poor, the weak, the fallen, weary and heavy-laden, to help themselves? When, a soldier like Minnie passes on, it only means their presence is withdrawn, their life and work remaining an inspiration and a call to us each to close the ranks and continue our march.” (George Lansbury)
Yep, I’m angry…at the omissions, the fawning, selective praise for a Tower Hamlets (Ceremonial) Mayor who is accused of spending thousands of pounds of our money on idling limousines, and above all at the hypocrisy of your account. Is this how to continue the march or is this just closing ranks? (I can’t remember who is in what party any more as you left the Labour Party? Akhtar was Labour when she committed her first offence, and then was Independent for the second offence? And Chaudhury is Labour, and always will be?, but wants money to entertain and for luxury travel to perform civic ‘duties’ in Birmingham but was “calm, eloquent and dignified” in that Meeting and alone besides one other Cllr, can take “pride” in his conduct?)
When it comes to Akhtar and Chaudhury, I would channel some other Tower Hamlets councillors of yore in your comparisons: Rowland Hirst and George Warren were two of eight corrupt Tower Hamlets councillors and also went to prison. Hirst was a three times Mayor of Stepney, too:
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast
a=d&d=EP19080810.2.73&dliv=&e=——-10–1—-0divorce+act+1898–
Please don’t cherry-pick from our history James, or write any more ‘positive’ puff-pieces for Cllr Chaudhury or give us your new, skewed take on the recidivist criminal Councillor Akhtar or on our collective Councillors’ conduct. There’s a powerful odour of partiality, if not quite mendacity in the room/public gallery. (Big Daddy, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.)
P.S. Minnie Lansbury did not die in prison. Now that Rushmead is to be saved, you’ll need to hurry to Bethnal Green Library before it is taken over by a community interest group/sold off like Whitechapel – and do a little research. To save you the bother she died in 1902, having left prison where she contracted the pneumonia that killed her.
Sorry about bad link. Try again. The 1908 ‘Mile End Scandals’ :
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=EP19080810.2.73&dliv=&e=——-10–1—-0divorce+act+1898–
Apologise. Another typo: “1902” is 1922.
When we came to Canary Wharf for the first time we thought this borough must be one of the richest in London as there were so many banks ..
But later we found out the youth poverty percentage in this borough was over 50% (from Metro) and it was one of the poorest boroughs in London — the brightness of Canary Wharf cannot really cover the rest of it. There MUST be a good reason for this.
http://www.londonspovertyprofile.org.uk/key-facts/overview-of-london-boroughs/
Editorial integrity at Tower Hamlets ‘east end life’ shown as non existent. As suspected after my call to the Editor last week, she has secreted news of Cllr Shelina Aktar’s jail sentence into a slithery column on page three headed, ’16 weeks jail for councillor’. For the vast majority of Tower Hamlets community, the news that Mayor Lutfur Rahman’s councillor was convicted of second benefit fraud ought to be FRONT PAGE. The paper might have shown a slither of integrity and investigative initiative by questioning whether the corrupt councillor ever completed the community service awarded to her following the FIRST conviction..