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Glenn Mulcaire may tell all now that payments from News International have stopped

Glenn Mulcaire may tell all  News of the World's secrets as payments stop
  • Lucy Carne 
  • From:Herald Sun  
  • July 22, 2011 

THE private investigator at the heart of the phone hacking scandal has hinted he may lift the lid on the 'News of the World's' secrets.
Glenn Mulcaire, 40, was on an alleged $160,000 annual contract to supply the paper with phone numbers used to hack the voicemails of celebrities, politicians, murder victims, including schoolgirl Milly Dowler, and people killed in the Middle East and terrorism attacks.
Despite being arrested and jailed for his role in phone hacking, Mr Mulcaire's legal fees were paid by News of the World publisher News International.
But less than 24 hours after News International's James Murdoch dramatically revealed to British MPs that Mr Mulcaire was being financially supported, the company said it had stopped all payments to the convicted hacker.
After news of the ceased payments broke yesterday, the father of five broke his silence.
"As you can appreciate, we are in the middle of a number of inquiries at the moment," Mr Mulcaire said.
"It's a very fluid and developing situation. Like I said, the developments have been different from day to day and I have no further comment to make at this stage.
"However, this may change."
James Murdoch denied allegations that Mulcaire's legal payments were hush money, telling MPs he was "as surprised as you are" when he discovered certain legal fees were paid to Mr Mulcaire by News International, a sister company to News Ltd, publisher of theHerald Sun.
Mr Mulcaire reportedly faces about 24 potential civil law suits from alleged hacking victims. Files seized by police allegedly reveal Mr Mulcaire had more than 4000 names on a list of potential hacking victims.
The High Court yesterday ruled Scotland Yard must hand over police information to actor Hugh Grant and his ex-girlfriend Jemima Khan showing that their phone messages might have been intercepted by Mr Mulcaire.
Speculation was rampant on Twitter that Princess Diana was also a phone-hacking victim.
Tom Mockridge, the New Zealander who last week replaced Rebekah Brooks as News International's chief executive, slammed News of the World phone hackers as lazy, corrupt and having "fake scoops".
He told staff at the Times an internal phone-hacking probe would look at other News International titles.

  • Net widens in UK hacking probe The Australian18 minutes ago
  • News 'thwarted hacking probe'Herald Sun1 day ago
  • Charges over Murdoch pie attackHerald Sun1 day ago
  • Composed Brooks says she was unaware The Australian1 day ago
  • PM defends aide in hacking scandalHerald Sun2 days ago
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/net-widens-in-uk-hacking-probe/story-e6frg996-1226099352272

    murdoch NOTW
    News Corporation Chief Rupert Murdoch reads a copy of one his newspapers, The London Times, as he leaves his London home yesterday. Source: AFP

    Net widens in UK hacking probe

    • Peter Wilson, Europe correspondent 
    • From:The Australian 
    • July 22, 2011 
    • SCOTLAND Yard appears to be widening its investigation into voicemail hacking beyond Rupert Murdoch's defunct News of the World to take in other British newspapers.
    The rapidly expanding police task force investigating the scandal has asked for material gathered by a 2003 Information Commission inquiry, which found that journalists from across Fleet Street used private detectives to help gather information.
    While private investigators do some legitimate work for newspapers, police believe they have also performed illegal acts, such as the hacking of telephones by investigator Glenn Mulcaire, which led him and a News of the World reporter to be sent to jail in 2007.
    Information Commissioner Christopher Graham, who is responsible for overseeing laws
    on data protection and freedom of information, told the BBC that his office had given the police the files of Operation Motorman, an inquiry that seized thousands of pages detailing a private detective's often illegal work for 31 publications.
    The investigation found the Daily Mail had made the most requests, followed by the Sunday People and the Daily Mirror. "The whole Motorman file has been put at the disposal of the Metropolitan Police Operation Weeting, which is looking into the hacking allegations," he said. "It is a rich source of possibly corroborative evidence in some cases."
    Senior police announced yesterday that they had expanded from 45 to 60 the number of police on the case, following complaints by MPs that the police had so far contacted only 170 of up to 12,800 people who may have had their phone messages intercepted by Mulcaire.
    Piers Morgan, the former Daily Mirror editor who is now a CNN television host, was dragged into the affair this week.
    Conservative MP Louise Mensch told a parliamentary committee that Morgan had boasted in his memoirs that when he was editor, the Mirror used phone hacking to get a story that won a "scoop of the year" award.
    Morgan vehemently denied the claim, pointing out that he had indicated in his memoirs only that he learned about "the little trick" of phone hacking and had changed his own phone's password to protect his privacy.
    Mr Mulcaire yesterday indicated that he was looking forward to speaking publicly about his work for News's British newspapers. This followed Mr Murdoch's rapid delivery on his promise to a parliamentary committee on Tuesday to stop his company paying legal fees for Mr Mulcaire.
    Mr Murdoch's son James, the chairman of News International, had confirmed the firm was still paying legal expenses for Mr Mulcaire, who had been identified as the man who hacked into the messages of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler in 2002.
    Labour MPs claimed the payments were meant to silence Mr Mulcaire, and the Dowler family's lawyer said they were outraged to learn that despite Rupert Murdoch's apology for the intrusion into Milly's voice messages, the company had kept funding Mr Mulcaire's legal team.
    Mr Mulcaire's lawyers have been resisting efforts by hacking victims to disclose information about his activities, and the end of News' funding apparently means he will be free to speak out.
    The private investigator told reporters outside his home yesterday that he did not want to comment yet but "that will change".
    News International also gave one of its law firms, Harbottle & Lewis, a partial exemption from its duty of client confidentiality so the law firm could answer questions from police and MPs about its role in the company's decision not to probe deeper several years ago.
    James Murdoch told MPs on Tuesday that advice from the law firm had contributed to the company's conclusion that phone hacking was not widespread, prompting the law firm to ask to be released from its duty of client confidentiality so it could respond to any inaccurate statements and to explain events in 2007.





    The Age may have broken law: minister


    FEDERAL Justice Minister Brendan O'Connor has suggested Melbourne's The Age newspaper may have broken the law by accessing a Labor Party database during last year's Victorian state election.
    Mr O'Connor, asked by Melbourne radio 3AW's Neil Mitchell what conduct by journalists would be prohibited by the government's proposed privacy laws, said there were "a number of laws" already in place to prevent the improper accessing of information.
    Asked whether the decision by senior editors and journalists from The Age to access the database without ALP authorisation and download the private details of voters would run foul of the proposed privacy regime, Mr O'Connor responded: "I won't comment on a particular matter because I don't have the facts before me.
    "I will say this though: if information is being privately held and an organisation breaches it or takes it improperly or unlawfully, clearly there are a number of laws that are offended there.
    "We do have laws in place to protect the interests of privacy and certain matters.
    "What we don't have is any certainty whether there is civil redress when a person's privacy has been seriously invaded and that's why we want to have this discussion."
    Editor-in-chief of The Age Paul Ramadge did not respond last night to Mr O'Connor's comments. The Age has said it gained access through a party whistleblower with an authorised log-on.
    The Australian Federal Police is assessing whether the Fairfax newspaper may have breached the Cybercrime Act 2001.
    Victorian ALP secretary Noah Carroll made it clear to The Australian last week that The Age did not have permission to access the system. The Age reported information gained from its unauthorised access on its front page the week before the election was won by Ted Baillieu's Coalition.



    Escape clause for rich and powerful

    • Matt Johnston and Carly Crawford 
    • From:Herald Sun 
    • July 22, 2011 
    PROPOSED new privacy laws could stop the media investigating corruption.
    The Lara Bingle nude photo case and the Defence skype sex scandal are scenarios new laws could cover.
    But media law experts say rich and powerful people could abuse such protections to stymie legitimate investigative journalism.
    Privacy Minister Brendan O'Connor said his department had begun reviewing recommendations by the Australian Law Reform Commission to enshrine in law an explicit right to privacy.
    It comes after the News of the World scandal in the UK, where phones were hacked.
    Australia has no specific right to privacy law, but has privacy-protecting laws such as defamation, trespass and restrictions on the use of surveillance devices.
    The former head of the Australian Press Council, David Flint, said privacy legislation could harm Australia's media freedom.
    Mr Flint, now an emeritus professor of law at the University of Technology Sydney, said the people who would take advantage of the law would be the "rich and powerful".
    "They would use that to stop investigation of legitimate matters of public interest," he said.
    Media law expert and HWL Ebsworth partner Nicholas Pullen said such changes would be difficult to regulate and could stifle journalism.
    Mr O'Connor said a review was appropriate.
    "People need remedies if their privacy has been violated," he said.

    "This Government strongly believes in the principle of freedom of expression and also the right to privacy.
    "Any changes to our laws will have to strike a balance between the two ideals."
    Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull said it was reasonable to have a debate about privacy in light of rapidly evolving technology.
    But Opposition Leader Tony Abbott warned the Gillard Government against a "thinly veiled attempt to intimidate the press".
    Complaints about invasion of privacy constitute only a fraction of those lodged against the Australian press. A Herald Sun investigation of complaints statistics found just 21 out of 529 complaints made to the press council last year were about privacy invasion.

    Privacy tort 'will shield rich and powerful'

    • Lawyer Justin Quill, who acts for News Limited and other media companies, predicted the new privacy tort would strangle press freedom while shielding the rich and powerful from scrutiny.
      "There's no doubt in my mind. This is a law for politicians -- the rich and the famous and politicians," he said.
      This week, the government announced formal consultations on an Australian Law Reform Commission proposal to give people the right of redress in the courts for serious breaches of privacy.
      Privacy Minister Brendan O'Connor said the public would expect the government to look again at the use of private information, given the "reprehensible behaviour" seen in the News of the World scandal.
      But media law expert Nicholas Pullen warned against "knee-jerk" political reaction to the crimes committed at the British tabloid.
      He said a statutory right to privacy could stifle investigative journalism, and called for the government to return to first principles and define what it meant by privacy.
      "What we need is a reasoned and balanced debate and not something in the shadow of something that's happening overseas," he said.
      Andrew Stewart, head of the Australian media and content group at Baker & McKenzie, said there were already sufficient privacy protections in media codes of practice, trespass and telecommunications laws.
      If the right to privacy was enshrined in law, as proposed, "then it's going to have to be a balanced approach and there must also be an explicit recognition of the freedom of information and the freedom of speech", Mr Stewart said.

      Undoing free speech a sop to placate Bob

      • THE federal government seems intent on allowing the Greens to destroy Labor's credentials on free speech.
        After permitting the Greens to vandalise the federal shield law for journalists' sources, the government has decided to embrace the thinking of the Greens on privacy law.
        This will have the effect of reversing privacy law reforms that were enacted by Labor state governments just six years ago.
        It will also leave federal Labor even further removed from the grand plans for transparency and accountability that were contained in the party's 2007 election platform.
        In its rush to placate Bob Brown, federal Labor has forgotten that Labor state governments took a completely different position in the last debate over privacy.
        In 2005, when privacy was debated during the push for national defamation laws, every Labor state lined up on the free-speech side of the argument.
        What a pity Julia Gillard and Privacy Minister Brendan O'Connor are prepared to repudiate that proud Labor history. Unless federal Labor returns to its roots and rids itself of the Greens influence, its plans for a statutory privacy tort will brand Labor as the party that wound back free speech. Labor was already struggling on this front. Its 2007 policy promised a new era of open government based on real protection for whistleblowers in the federal public service.
        It's been a while: where is Labor's draft legislation?
        The same policy invoked the name of convicted whistleblower Allan Kessing as an example of one wrong that needed righting.
        For more than a year, O'Connor has had a pardon application from Kessing. For almost six months, O'Connor has known about growing doubts about Kessing's conviction because evidence was withheld from his defence team.
        The lack of action on these key issues had already fed doubts about Labor's direction. That direction now looks like reverse.
        A privacy tort is clearly aimed at intimidating the media, particularly News Limited, publisher of The Australian, the newspaper Brown loves to hate.
        The effect will be to raise the cost of doing business for the entire media industry. The privacy lobby is dominated by lawyers for a reason: a privacy tort would be a rich vein for lawyers.
        It would replace much of the legal work that was lost when the privacy elements in the defamation defence of truth were removed back in 2005.
        Since those changes, the media has known that if it publishes the truth it will be protected from defamation. Before those changes, defamation operated as a quasi-privacy tort. By reversing that, the costs of running a media business will grow. That will raise the barriers to entry and entrench the position of existing media outlets such as The Australian.

        News of the World hacking latest - hacking prompts privacy crackdown

        News Corp Murdoch
        Home... Rupert Murdoch at his Fifth Avenue residence in New York yesterday.Source: AP
        THE Gillard Government is moving to a privacy law crackdown, prompted by the News of the World scandal.
        The Government will revisit three-year-old recommendations made by the Australian Law Reform Commission which proposed tougher privacy laws.
        The commission has recommended introducing a "general right to privacy", enabling people to sue for breaches - a reform that has been criticised as undermining free speech.
        Privacy Minister Brendan O'Connor said yesterday "clearly what we want to do is to ensure that individuals or organisations do not seriously invade the privacy of others".
        "People need remedies if they have been violated, if their privacy has been violated," he told Sky News.
        "Right now there is no general right to privacy in Australia, and that means there's no certainty for anyone wanting to sue for an invasion of their privacy.







 

Murdochs Say They Relied on Law Firm’s Phone-Hacking Study

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-07-20/murdochs-say-they-relied-on-law-firm-s-phone-hacking-study.html

July 20, 2011, 12:00 PM EDT

By Erik Larson and Lindsay Fortado

(Adds Abramson’s comment in 10th paragraph. For more coverage of News Corp., see {EXT3 <GO>}.)

July 20 (Bloomberg) -- Rupert Murdoch and his son James told U.K. lawmakers that resolution of a phone-hacking scandal at News Corp.’s British unit was delayed because they relied on a clean bill of health from the law firm Harbottle & Lewis LLP.

The law firm, based in London, has clients including Diageo Plc, Vodafone Group Plc and model Kate Moss, according to its website. It was hired in 2007 to examine a file of News International internal e-mails and found no evidence of illegal activity beyond a private investigator and News of the World royal reporter who were jailed after intercepting voice mails for the tabloid, James Murdoch told lawmakers yesterday.

“We and the company rested on that opinion for a period of time,” James Murdoch said at the hearing. “It is a key bit of outside legal advice from senior counsel.” The company went to police four years later, after a new internal review of the same file uncovered evidence of additional wrongdoing, he said.

Ken Macdonald, the former U.K. director of public prosecutions, told a separate group of lawmakers yesterday that Harbottle & Lewis had evidence that indicated “serious criminal offenses” by News Corp. workers. Lawmakers described the file as “an enormous pile of documents” that sat at the law firm for years.

Paper Shut Down

The Murdochs cited the law firm’s report as they sought to explain why News International failed to understand or acknowledge the widespread use of phone hacking at the 168-year- old newspaper, which was shut in an effort to contain fallout from the scandal. James Murdoch said that previous denials of wrongdoing were based on the outside study, as well as police assertions there was no need to investigate further.

Harbottle & Lewis Managing Partner Glen Atchison said the 55-year-old firm asked News International to release it from “professional duties of confidentiality” so that it could respond to “inaccurate statements or contentions.”

The company refused, “so we are still unable to respond in any detail as to our advice or the scope of our instructions in 2007, which is a matter of great regret,” Atchison said in a phone interview yesterday.

In a May 29, 2007, letter to News International, Harbottle & Lewis’s Lawrence Abramson said a review of e-mails found no evidence that executives knew about hacking by Clive Goodman, the former royal reporter at News of the World.

Cover-Up Claims

“That opinion did satisfy the company at the time,” James Murdoch said at yesterday’s hearing. He declined to specify what was found in the e-mails, saying it could hamper criminal investigations.

“Professional duty of confidentiality prevents me from commenting on this,” Abramson, now at the law firm Fladgate LLP, said today in an e-mailed statement.

John Yates, the assistant Metropolitan Police commissioner who resigned this week because of his connections to a former News of the World editor, separately told Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee “the facts appear to be that News International have deliberately covered up” evidence.

Asked at the hearing if he would consider suing Harbottle & Lewis, James Murdoch said it was “really a matter for the future.”

Harbottle & Lewis, with about 75 lawyers, has advised the Ben Sherman Group Ltd. on its British property portfolio and the DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. regarding the performance of the movie “Shrek” as a play at a London theater.

News Corp. Board

Macdonald was hired in May by another British law firm, Hickman & Rose, on behalf of News Corp.’s board, to review the file of e-mails held since 2007 by Harbottle & Lewis. Macdonald told lawmakers he recommended the company’s board give the file to the Metropolitan Police.

The file showed evidence of “serious criminal offenses,” Macdonald said. Police have since opened a probe into whether officers took bribes from the newspaper for information leading to stories.

“I can’t imagine anyone looking at that file and not seeing crime,” Macdonald said.

The file was put together in 2007 when Goodman was bringing an unfair dismissal claim against News International, he said.

Macdonald, who was head of the Crown Prosecution Service at the time Goodman was charged, said it took “maybe five minutes” to review the nine or 10 e-mails included in the file and conclude police needed to see them. “The material I saw was so blindingly obvious that anyone trying to argue that it wasn’t would’ve had a hard time,” he said.

Mulcaire Fees

Rupert and James Murdoch told U.K. lawmakers yesterday they didn’t know if News Corp. was still paying the legal fees for Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was jailed for six months for intercepting voice mails left for supermodel Elle Macpherson and members of the British royal family.

News International said today it stopped paying Mulcaire’s legal fees. The company declined to say when it stopped the payments.

Mulcaire’s lawyer, Sarah Webb, didn’t return a call for comment.

Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, competes with News Corp. units in providing financial news and information.

--With assistance from Jonathan Browning in London. Editors: Christopher Scinta, Anthony Aarons

To contact the reporters on this story: Erik Larson in London at elarson4@bloomberg.net; Lindsay Fortado in London at lfortado@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net



20th April 2011 By Lyubov Pronina

July 20 (Bloomberg) -- Alexander Lebedev, owner of the London Evening Standard newspaper, said he may be interested in remaking fellow billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World if the Russian investor is able to sell some assets.

“I wish, but I don’t think my pocket is deep enough at the moment, but if I’m able to sell any of my businesses, be it Aeroflot or banking, then I’m really very much interested,” Lebedev said in an interview in his office in Moscow. “Half- jokingly, I would say I wish I could remake the News of the World under a different brand: World News.”

Murdoch’s News Corp. was forced to close News of the World and abandon its bid for British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc this month after rival newspapers reported that journalists working for the tabloid hacked the phones of victims of violence, including a missing schoolgirl who was later found murdered.

London’s Metropolitan Police is investigating the hacking and allegations that News Corp.’s British newspaper unit, News International, paid officers to get stories. Murdoch, 80, denied any knowledge of phone hacking and payments to police at News of the World, blaming “people I trusted” during three hours of questioning by British lawmakers yesterday.

A former lawmaker in Russia’s lower house of parliament and a KGB officer who worked at the Soviet Embassy in London during the Cold War, Lebedev now has a fortune valued by Forbes magazine at $2.1 billion. His National Reserve Corp.’s holdings include a stake in Russia’s flagship airline OAO Aeroflot and in banking, construction, property, agriculture and media companies.

‘Funny Suggestion’

Lebedev, 51, said he would use a remade version of the defunct newspaper to raise interest in stories about corruption and wrongdoing by rich and powerful people. Murdoch’s newspapers worked in the public interest, aside from “playing on the least attractive strings of human nature,” he said.

“Let me just make a funny suggestion: so I decide tomorrow to re-launch News of the World, but calling it Worlds News,” he said. “I will be focusing not on interfering with a killed girl, phone hacking, but would need the journalists to really investigate -- and during investigations you have to observe the laws.”

Lebedev said in May he would quit business in Russia, citing pressure from the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor to the Soviet KGB.

Personal ‘Mission’

In November, he asked Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to intervene after law enforcement officials raided his National Reserve Bank. The raid was retribution for allegations of corruption printed in Novaya Gazeta, the Moscow weekly newspaper he owns with Mikhail Gorbachev, he said.

Being a newspaper owner in Russia and Britain is now a personal “mission” rather than a purely commercial endeavor, Lebedev said in the interview.

Novaya Gazeta is seeking permission from Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin to start distributing a daily version of the publication in Moscow subway stations, a venture Lebedev said will cost about $10 million. Lebedev, who also owns the Independent daily in the U.K., started a weekly tabloid in London called “i.”

“I would be the happiest person to actually get rid of everything, sell it, and just go into publishing and investigative journalism,” he said.

--Editors: Balazs Penz, Willy Morris.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lyubov Pronina in Moscow at lpronina@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at


 
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Photo 1:Here the leopard attacks a forest guard at Prakash Nagar village near Salugara, on the outskirts of Siliguri, India. The animal had strayed into the village area and mauled several villagers, including three guards, before being caught by forest officials, according to news reports. 
 
Photo 2: according to news reports.

Forest guards flee from the rampaging leopard whilst another attempts a shot from up high. The leopard, which suffered injuries caused by knives and batons, died later in the evening at a veterinary center.

Photo 3:
A vicious assault on the forest guard seriously injured by this attack. Strangely a similar incident occurred in India this January as a leopard attacked another six in an eight-hour spree in the northern city of Karad.

Photo 4: Forest guards attempt to shoot down the attacking leopard from cover in the bushes

Photo 5:
The leopard prepares to attack a forest guard, left, at Prakash Nagar village near Salugara, on the outskirts of Siliguri, India.

 
A wild leopard attacked six people in a slum in India while terrified villagers watched in horror
 
A wild leopard has mauled six people after it strayed into an Indian village in an attack that was caught on camera.
The big cat pounced on a forest guard at Prakash Nagar village in West Bengal.
Another man and a local woman were also among those attacked in the densely-populated slum village which is home to about 3,000 people.
Terrified villagers climbed on to roofs to escape and watched on in horror as forest guards tried to fight off the animal with their weapons.
Wildlife officers tried unsuccessfully several times to tranquillise the feline during the frenzied attack.
And just as forest officials thought the attack was over when the animal took refuge in a bush, it quickly re-emerged again and attacked three policemen.
A wildlife official said the big cat was startled by the hundreds of curious and frightened onlookers.
Kanchan Banerjee, a forest ranger from the Sukna Wildlife Range, told local newspaper The Hindu: "With the villagers trying to chase it, it tried to flee and injured five villagers in the process."
He said one forest guard was critically injured while others were not so seriously hurt.
The leopard was eventually shot and tied up before being taken to a nearby veterinary clinic where it later died.
It is not the first time a leopard has wreaked havoc in India with local media reporting in January how a feline went on an eight-hour rampage, racing through the streets and into people's homes and attacking at least six people in the 60,000-resident northern city of Karad.
After two gunshots fired in the air by police failed to scare off the animal, the leopard was killed by two shots at close-range from a police officer's revolver.
Indian farmers also often report deaths of cattle and other animals as a result of wild leopards.
 

EU cash snatchers

Tory and Labour MEPs in sneaky new exes ploy

By Guy Basnett and David Coverdale
February 13, 2011
SNEAKY British MEPs are claiming cash for a day's work in Brussels before scuttling to the Eurostar minutes later and travelling HOME.

We caught Tory Robert Sturdy and Labour's Peter Skinner turning up at the Euro parliament at the crack of dawn to punch their card to grab £258 daily expenses.

Whistleblower... Ms Sinclaire Whistleblower... Ms Sinclaire
The allowance from struggling taxpayers is supposed to cover the cost of them attending official business in Brussels.

But our investigation found these grasping Euro MPs didn't stick around.

Instead they jumped into a plush official car, with their suitcases in tow, and arrived at the Eurostar terminal less than 45 MINUTES later before heading back to Blighty.


And they're not alone. Hordes of foreign MEPs are at it too.

This will outrage hard-working Brits who hand over £8.5BILLION a year to Europe - £137 per person - to pay for these pampered politicians. And it will be a huge embarrassment for Prime Minister David Cameron who in 2008 stepped in to clean up his party's expenses system in Brussels.

He said at the time: "Just as I expect our MPs to adhere to the highest standards, so must MEPs. The taxpaying public have a right to know how their money is being spent and politicians have a duty to ensure it is spent properly."
Disgusted West Midlands MEP Nikki Sinclaire agreed to expose her fellow Euro politicians - who earn £80,955 a year NOT including expenses.

Working with her, we filmed on Fridays in the parliament buildings of Brussels in Belgium and Strasbourg, France. We found members from all over Europe exploiting the signing-in system.
Greedy MEPs were QUEUEING outside the Attendance Office even before it opened at 7am.
Of the 160 Euro MPs we filmed signing in before 10am, more than a third - 54 - arrived with overnight bags and suitcases. At least 25 left parliament shortly after.
Of these, we caught nine arriving at the airport shortly after, ready to fly home, as well as our Brits on Eurostar.
Ms Sinclaire, who runs campaigns from her website www.yourmep.org, said: "It's a disgrace. On a Friday, when parliament is virtually closed, MEPs still sign in for their £258 and then head straight for the exit doors.
" Many people don't earn £258 a week, but some MEPs claim it for a day when they're in for barely an hour. Taxpayers should know how their cash is being spent."
In Brussels, East of England Euro MP Mr Sturdy, 66, signed for his daily expenses at just 7:18am. And balding South East MEP Mr Skinner, 51, was close behind his pal, signing in at 7.40am.

The pair arrived at Brussels Midi station together at 8.04am, jumping out of a chauffeur-driven people carrier in good time for the 8.29am Eurostar. Two hours later we caught them at London's St Pancras station.

The Brits were caught on camera two days ago, but on other days of filming we found a string of MEPs turning up early to claim their cash in Brussels.

It was still barely light on January 28 when Polish Euro MP Jolanta Hibner, 60, wheeled her suitcase into parliament to sign in at 7.58am. We pictured her at Brussels Airport just 22 minutes later, ready to fly home.

Another Polish MEP, Adam Gierek, 72, signed in at 8.01am with a colleague. We captured him stepping out of a chauffeur-driven car at the airport at 10:51am. Then Portuguese Euro MP Ilda Figueiredo 62, signed the register at 8:20am before being spotted at departures at 10:04am.



And Spanish MEP, purple-haired Eider Gardiazabal Rubial, 35, wheeled her suitcase to the Attendance Office at 9:56am, before being seen at the airport at 10:20am.

In Strasbourg, despite screens showing no official business on January 21, dozens of MEPs claimed expenses in the early hours.

We caught Polish Euro MP Danuta Jazlowiecka, 53, signing in at 9.21am, wheeling a suitcase. Then, at 9:42am - just 21 minutes later - she arrived at Strasbourg airport.

There are only 134 days of official parliamentary business - which does NOT include Fridays - in a year, worth £34,538 in daily allowances. By also signing in on the 37 Fridays, each MEP can trouser £9,537 extra.


Mr Sturdy said he worked late on Thursday night and that a power failure at King's Cross would have made getting home difficult. He added: "I'm signing in because I'm doing my job. As vice chair of international trade I have a lot on at the moment." He admitted he "often" signed in on Fridays.

Mr Skinner said: "It is often the case I will work six days on the trot, some of which will be spent in the constituency. My first duty is to represent people across the South-East which is sometimes best done face-to-face"

But EU rules state the allowance which they claimed is supposed to cover expenses like accommodation and meals incurred by attending official meetings away from their home country on the day signed for.

Ms Jazlowiecka's aide told us: "It is not breaking rules to sign in and leave." And Ms Figueiredo's spokesman said it was up to parliament to determine what she could claim
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