As has been mentioned in the comments thread to the last post on this blog, Lutfur Rahman has now lodged his application for a judicial review of the April 23 Election Court verdict.
To recap, he was found guilty on seven of nine counts in the petitioners’ case. His JR seeks to have three overturned.
These relate to the findings of bribery in respect of grants and payments to the media, the payment of canvassers, and of undue spiritual influence.
He is not challenging (and in effect accepts) the finding of false statement (S106 of the Representation of the Peoples Act) against John Biggs (an offence for which he was found personally liable), and various findings of corrupt practices and electoral fraud (fraudulent votes and false registration etc) via his agents.
He is currently banned for five years from holding office because he was found personally guilty of a corrupt practice (bribery). If he overturns this finding his ban will automatically fall to three years, that being the penalty for the other lesser offences.
His ban would then expire April 23, 2018. That would prevent him from standing for mayor that year as the close of nominations for candidates would be a few weeks earlier. However, he would be free to stand as a councillor in a by-election after that date or indeed for Parliament in May 2020.
Ifs, ifs…
As for his hopes of succeeding in the JR, I’m by no means and expert and will leave that to other people to judge or guess. The grounds for his case are outlined in this document: Grounds for JR.
A useful summary is provided on p2 of that document, here:
So he is arguing there are findings of fact by Commissioner Mawrey for which there was no evidential basis in law. His JR also has a human rights flavour to it.
For this, he has hired an extremely heavyweight QC, Ben Emmerson, pictured left, (who I don’t think has much experience of local government or election law, if that matters). Emmerson is the counsel for the current and controversial Child Sex Abuse inquiry.
How much will that cost Lutfur, has been the cry in the comments section on that blog. Well, the answer to that lies in Lutfur’s other ongoing and related predicament: the outstanding cost order against him. You’ll recall that Mawrey ordered Lutfur to pay £250,000 of costs incurred during the Election Court trial. Not a penny of this Judgment Debt has yet been paid.
In court documents prepared for a recent freezing order on his assets (we’ll come to those later), it emerged that he expects his full costs of a judicial review that proceeds to a hearing will be about £160,000. Of that Ben Emmerson QC would collect about £61,000. Lutfur’s solicitors K&L Gates would earn around £55,000, while the junior counsel in the case would pocket about £34,000.
No wonder lawyers love Lutfur. One day, I’ll try and calculate how much his profession has earned from his since the day he took Labour to court in the 2010 mayoral selection process.
He has also engaged another lawyer of (a slightly different) note to help him fight the cost and freezing order: Saghir Hussain (right). He’s also a lawyer specialising in human rights and is based in Whitechapel. He’s also listed as a board member of Cage (formerly Cage Prisoners) and among his former clients was a certain Mohammed Emwazi, aka “Jihadi John”.
He represented Emwazi from 2009 and before he became one of the world’s most wanted. The full details are here. You’ll remember from the controversy earlier this year that Cage claimed that MI5’s hounding of Emwazi was a catalyst in him becoming Islamic State’s poster boy executioner.
Hussain tweeted during the Election Court trial in March that the case against Lutfur was about the Establishment wanting to crush “all uppity Muslims”.
If Lutfur wins his JR, it’s likely the Judgment Debt of £250k will be reduced from its original penalty. In addition (and a lawyer can correct me on this if I’m wrong) the petitioners would also become liable for all or some of his JR costs; I’d imagine they would be offset against the new Judgment Debt.
If he loses the JR his liability to the petitioners increases of course by any money they have to spend on the JR.
So that brings us back to the question of how he’s going to pay for it all. The petitioners lawyers say that he has yet to disclose how much has been donated to the fighting fund set up at the Water Lilly rally in April, a fund being chaired by the suspended Labour NEC member Christine Shawcroft.
There is also a running argument over the Lutfur’s property interests and these have been detailed well by Love Wapping here. Lutfur lives in a six-bedroom family home in Old Montague Street with nine other adults and one child and the petitioners argue that his outgoings towards bills in that house (owned by his father and brother) must be low.
During his time in office his register of interests disclosed he owned two investment properties bought 10 years ago. These are 30 Deal Street in Whitechapel (bought for £272k) and 3 Grace Street, a small terraced house he bought for £230k in Bromley-by-Bow. But his wife now claims she owns all of 30 Deal Street and 74 per cent of 3 Grace Street, so she argues they can’t be used to pay her husband’s debt. She also owns the neighbouring property at 5 Grace Street; Lutfur has not disclosed whether he has any interest in that.
According to Zoopla, 30 Deal Street is now worth about £572k, while 3 Grace St is estimated at about £420k.
Apparently both are rented out. Again according to Zoopla, the estimated annual rents are £26,400 (£2200 per month) and £22,992 (£1916 per month).
The petitioners’ lawyers have alleged Lutfur is trying to hide his assets and are seeking more information about any other large assets he might own. Lutfur has denied this.
It was also alleged in the Election Court that Lutfur owns a stake in the Bangla City Cash and Carry, off Brick Lane in Spitalfields. This stake is estimated at £100k. But Lutfur denies any such stake.
[As an aside, is there an argument for councillors to disclose all properties they own (both in the UK and abroad), not just in the borough in which they serve? How many own properties abroad, e.g. Dubai, I wonder.]
Two weeks ago, High Court judge Mr Justice Edis ordered Lutfur to disclose income and expenditure going back five years. He also froze assets worth £350,000 and required him to disclose tax returns going back seven years. A review of the situation will take place in the near future.
The saga continues.
Trial by Jeory 