Andrew Gilligan has consistently asserted that he has never claimed in his investigations for the Standard that Lee Jasper has broken the law. He asserted it in Monday's Standard in the process of challenging what Livingstone told Vanessa Feltz on 28th February - "No one [in the Standard] has ever said Mr Jasper is the biggest crook since Al Capone, or a crook of any kind" - and during his own appearance on the Feltz show on Tuesday (listen again from one hour, 17 minutes in). He also made the point very explicitly in the Standard on the 21st February:
"The Standard does not withdraw a single word it has printed about Mr Jasper. But in all those thousands of words, one word we have quite deliberately never used about him is 'corrupt'. (It was used, once, in a quote by somebody else, not referring specifically to Mr Jasper.) Mr Jasper's alleged offences are not criminal. They are offences of misconduct in public office. We have not, so far, accused him personally of anything the police might be interested in. Our charges against Mr Jasper are of cronyism and misuse of public funds. We do not claim, and never have claimed, that he has been lining his own pockets. What we say is that he has been lining his friends' pockets, with your money, and protecting them as they, shall we say, lose it."
There was also his contribution to the comment thread below my Guardian Cif piece about the Standard's Influentials debate, pointing out that he'd never used the word "corrupt" about Jasper. However, during that debate Livingstone, one of the panelists, said in response to questions from Gilligan that although his understanding was that Gilligan's articles stayed just the safe side of libel, he believed they did contain allegations that Jasper might have committed criminal offences. That such a view had been conveyed to Livingstone was confirmed by the comment left at the foot of the comment thread by a GLA spokesperson. It began:
"The advice of the GLA's Monitoring Officer is that the Evening Standard has made allegations which if supported by evidence could amount to criminal offences. What is missing is the evidence. The fact that the Evening Standard have not used the word corruption does not mean that they have not alleged criminal activities have taken place. 'Misconduct in public office' which Andrew Gilligan said was all that they had alleged in a recent article is a criminal offence that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment."
See the whole comment here.
The Monitoring Officer is appointed by the London Assembly - not the Mayor - to ensure that GLA employees and elected representatives - including the Mayor and his advisers - do not act outside the Law and has the power to overrule the Mayor on legal issues. After Ken Livingstone suspended Lee Jasper and referred the Gilligan/Standard articles to the police, inviting them to investigate whether Jasper had committed any criminal offence, the Monitoring Officer provided the police with an assessment of the Evening Standard's articles. This was later circulated to the leader of each party on the Assembly prior to its Q & A session with mayoral advisers on 5th March (the one Lee Jasper would have been at had he not resigned the day before). I have obtained a copy of the Monitoring Officer's assessment and reproduce the relevant section in full below. The reason the numbering starts at 2 is because the first item addressed in the document relates to a separate matter. Its conclusions about the limits of what Andrew Gilligan and the Standard allege are significantly different from those of their author.
2. The Evening Standard on 21 February [in an article by Andrew Gilligan] alleges that "Mr Jasper’s alleged offences are not criminal, They are offences of misconduct in public office.' This, however, is a clear error in law by the Evening Standard. 'Misconduct in public office’ is a criminal offence under the common law and therefore this is clearly a criminal allegation against Mr Jasper. Halsbury’s Laws of England states: ‘A public officer commits the common law offence of misconduct in a public office if, acting as such, he wilfully neglects to perform his duty and/or wilfully misconducts himself to such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder, without reasonable excuse or justification. The offence is punishable by imprisonment for life or any shorter term and by fine at the discretion of the court.’ This alleged criminal offence undoubtedly relates to the six organisations you are investigating.
3. According to reports in the Evening Standard of 28 January the Metropolitan Police raided the Deptford offices of Ethnic Mutual and executed a search warrant at the Brockley home of Titus Boye-Thompson, Ethnic Mutual's secretary – indicating they considered possible criminal activity was involved in regard to Ethnic Mutual. Andrew Gilligan alleged in the Evening Standard of 28 January ‘Lee Jasper has admitted that £18,000 of City Hall money was improperly diverted to bail out a private company of which he is a director. Following enquiries by the Standard, Mr Jasper admitted today that the £18,000 of taxpayers' money was diverted from Ethnic Mutual to a private company, African Caribbean Positive Image Foundation, of which he was company secretary. ACPIF was recently dissolved without filing accounts.’ Mr Jasper has denied knowledge of what appears to be an improper, or possibly illegal, transaction until October 2007 despite being a director of the company. If this denial is true this would presumably exonerate him but evidently if there were evidence that this denial was false this might involve a criminal activity.
4. Andrew Gilligan wrote in the Evening Standard on 5 December: ‘‘A senior adviser to the Mayor, Ken Livingstone, is under GLA investigation after at least £2.5 million in City Hall money was channelled to organisations controlled by himself, his friends and his business associates. Lee Jasper, the Mayor's director of equalities and policing, is at the centre of a network of companies which have received large sums of public money from Mr Livingstone while appearing to do little or no work in return. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money paid to the companies is unaccounted for or has disappeared.‘ If money which is ‘unaccounted for or has disappeared’ was directed to organisations ‘controlled by himself [Lee Jasper] his friends and his business associates’ this would presumably involve potential criminality.
5. The Evening Standard of 21 February also accuses Mr Jasper of ‘misuse of public funds.’ This can be a criminal offence depending on the circumstances. This clearly relates to the six organisations you are investigating.
6. The Evening Standard of 21 February alleges that: ‘What we say is that he has been lining his friend’s pockets, with your money, and protecting them as they, shall we say, lose it.’ If that were true there may be offences of fraud. This clearly relates to the six organisations you are investigating.
7. The Evening Standard on 21 December stated: ‘The Vauxhall MP Kate Hoey last night handed over to the police allegations of fraud, intimidation and violence at the South London Green Badge Taxi School, a project closely linked to the Mayor's senior aide, Lee Jasper, and the recipient of grants from the Mayor's London Development Agency and Transport for London…At the taxi school, bank statements seen by this newspaper show that money was diverted to a body called the Inner City Fund, controlled by Mr Jasper's associates Greg Nowell and Clive Grey, which was struck off the companies register for breaking company law.’
The Evening Standard alleges that LDA and TfL grants were gained thanks to the ‘strong support of Lee Jasper.’ This alleges money was diverted to an Inner City Fund controlled by ‘associates’ of Lee Jasper. If such diversion of money took place, this could constitute a criminal act and it would be necessary to ascertain if Lee Jasper was involved given that allegedly this money was only given to the company due to the strong support of Mr Jasper.
8. The Evening Standard alleged on 21 February: ‘the Green Badge Taxi School, run by two close associates of Mr Jasper… received £280,000 thanks to him. We have in our possession copies of bank statements showing that literally within days of the grant being paid, almost all of it was siphoned off to front organizations run by Mr Jasper’s associates.’ If such siphoning off of money took place within days of it being granted ‘thanks to him’ this clearly raises the question of whether Mr Jasper was an accomplice to what is clearly allegedly criminal activity.
9. The Evening Standard on 7 December accused Lee Jasper of ‘funnelling hundreds of thousand of pounds of GLA money to an organisation, Brixton Base’. Clear evidence has come to light that Lee Jasper intervened vigorously in order to prevent Brixton Base being evicted and in order to maintain its operations. This may of course simply be a policy position and therefore not a police matter. However if the current investigation shows that criminal activity were involved with Brixton Base it would seem important to know if Mr Jasper’s support for Brixton Base were purely a policy matter or whether there were evidence he was an accomplice in criminal activity given his role in supporting Brixton Base.
10. Andrew Gilligan in the Evening Standard alleged on 14 December: ‘leaked emails relate to a company called Diversity International, which in 2005 was given a £295,000 LDA grant to run a web-based tool for London business called the Diversity Dividend. The website only operated briefly and unsatisfactorily. Diversity International has now collapsed and all of the LDA’s money has vanished. Diversity International won the contract even though it had no expertise in computers and was based in Liverpool. It was run by Mr O’Loughlin, a long standing friend of Mr Jasper.’
On 5 December Andrew Gilligan alleged: ‘Mr Jasper, 49, is one of seven policy directors – the London equivalents of civil service permanent secretaries – who work at the Mayor's side developing and implementing policy at the highest level. Mr Jasper has worked for the Mayor since Mr Livingstone was first elected seven years ago, reporting directly to him and earning more than £111,000 a year. They have been longstanding political friends and allies for many years. ‘The officials have considerable influence over grants, some paid directly by the Mayor's office and others by Mr Livingstone's wholly controlled economic development body, the London Development Agency.
‘One grant recipient, Diversity International, controlled by a long-standing friend and business associate of Mr Jasper, Joel O'Loughlin, received £295,000 in LDA funding for the Diversity Dividend, a web-based tool for London business, even though the business consultancy has no expertise in computers and is based in Liverpool.’ The police are currently investigating Diversity International, and if a contract were awarded to an incompetent company controlled by a long standing friend and business associate of Mr Jasper, there is a clear suggestion that Mr Jasper was a party to possible criminal action.
Document ends.
Dave, can I suggest you do a little bit of actual reporting instead of simply reprinting GLA press releases? The criminal charge of "misconduct in public office" is brought in very specific cases usually involving police officers selling information to the press. The rest of the supposedly "independent" monitoring officer's letter (which was published by the GLA on its website, by the way) is quite desperate, even laughable, in its attempts to twist criminal allegations against other people into criminal allegations against Jasper.
Posted by: andrew.gilligan | March 14, 2008 at 12:59 PM