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| Jail term for expenses racket MEP | Jail term for expenses racket MEP |
| (10 minutes later) | |
| A former British MEP who admitted fiddling £39,000 worth of expenses has been jailed for two years. | A former British MEP who admitted fiddling £39,000 worth of expenses has been jailed for two years. |
| Tom Wise, 61, from Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire, initially denied false accounting and money laundering during the case at Southwark Crown Court | Tom Wise, 61, from Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire, initially denied false accounting and money laundering during the case at Southwark Crown Court |
| But the former MEP for the East, who was thrown out of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), later pleaded guilty. | But the former MEP for the East, who was thrown out of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), later pleaded guilty. |
| Wise took the money between 14 December 2004 and 24 December 2005, and spent it on cars and wine. | Wise took the money between 14 December 2004 and 24 December 2005, and spent it on cars and wine. |
| The court heard he had spent a year channelling taxpayers' cash into a bank account he secretly controlled. | |
| Newspaper expose | |
| Wise, of Ship Road in Leighton Buzzard, pretended the £3,000 "secretarial assistance allowance" he received every month was for his 62-year-old researcher Lindsay Jenkins. | |
| But after paying her just £500 each month he spent the rest "in support of his own interests", the court was told. | |
| The court heard that when the fraud was exposed by a national newspaper four years ago the MEP "took steps to cancel the claim and repay the money". | |
| "He did so because he had been caught and was trying to minimise the trouble he was in," the prosecution said. | |
| Had it not been discovered, the scam could have lasted five years and netted £180,000, the jury heard. | |
| Wise, a former policeman, previously represented UKIP before he had the party whip withdrawn in 2007 over the scandal. |