EU gives Nigel Farage 24 hours to explain Arron Banks funds
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/04/eu-gives-nigel-farage-24-hours-to-explain-arron-banks-funds
Nigel Farage has been given 24 hours by the European parliament to explain in person his failure to declare lavish expenses funded by Arron Banks, an insurance tycoon under investigation by the UK’s National Crime Agency.
The summons came just two hours before the Brexit party leader was spotted arriving at the US ambassador’s residence in London for a meeting with Donald Trump during the US president’s state visit to the UK.
Last month Channel 4 News revealed emails, invoices and documents suggesting that Banks had covered Farage’s costs for a £13,000-a-month Chelsea home in the year of the Brexit referendum, visits to the US and a chauffeur-driven car. Should Farage fail to convince the parliament of his reason for not declaring Banks’s funding, he could potentially lose the right to make a victory speech in the chamber in July as head of the his parliamentary group.
None of the donations were declared to the European parliament despite the MEPs’ code of conduct stipulating that all members must declare travel, accommodation or subsistence expenses from third parties.
The European parliament’s president, Antonio Tajani, had referred the matter to a committee of five MEPs who act as watchdogs over the parliament’s code of conduct. They met on Tuesday to agree on an unusually short deadline for Farage to explain the failure to declare the expenses at a hearing in Brussels on Wednesday.
Farage, who earns €102,000 (£90,000) each year as an MEP and received up to €700,000 from media appearances in 2014-18, told the Guardian that he had no intention of attending the hearing.