By Martin Banks - 5th December 2007
An MEP jailed for nine months for falsely claiming benefits has vowed to clear his name.
Former UKIP MEP Ashley Mote launched an appeal against his conviction at the appeal court in London on Wednesday.
Speaking before the hearing, he told this website, “Come hell or high water, I am determined to clear my name.”
In September, he was sentenced after being found guilty of 21 offences following a four-week trial.
Mote will retain his MEP seat because he would only have been disqualified if he had received a term of imprisonment of more than 12 months.
He says he intends to return to Brussels early in the New Year, where the father-of-two now sits as an independent MEP.
He was released on 12 November having served two months of his sentence, mostly at Ford open prison in Sussex. Under the terms of his release, Mote has since been the subject of a night-time curfew.
It means that, until 18 January, he must be electronically tagged between the hours of 6.45pm and 6.45am.
In an exclusive interview, he said, “The tagging is a bit of a joke really because it does not work properly. Even so, I am confined to my home during the evening which, obviously, is a real bind.”
He says that a “very friendly” governor at his prison allowed him to continue his MEP constituency work “normally.”
“This meant that my staff and constituents did not suffer as a result of my imprisonment.
“I had, and still have, a job to do and will continue to do it."
An MEP since 2004, Mote was jailed for nine months for falsely claiming benefits.
At his trial, the court heard Mote had run a successful business which collapsed in 1992.
He had begun claiming income support and benefits but failed to notify the benefits agency when he began earning money again in 1996.
The offences, totalling about €90,000, occurred between February 1996 and September 2002 while Mote was living in West Sussex.
The court found him guilty of eight charges of false accounting, eight of obtaining a money transfer by deception, four of evading liability and one of failing to notify a change of circumstances.
He was acquitted of a further four charges in the case brought by the UK Department for Work and Pensions.
Mote was elected as an MEP in 2004 as a member of UKIP, which threw him out of the party just days later when the party discovered the charges against him.
He briefly joined the far-right ITS group but now sits as an independent following its disbandment.
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