UKIP: Tom Wise sentenced to two years in prison

Tom Wise has been jailed for two years. He will probably be released after a year or even after just a few months.

We note that Farage and Nuttall are still claiming that UKIP took immediate action after first becoming aware of the allegations.

This is a lie.

Tom Wise remained a member of UKIP right up to March of this year. They even asked him to make a donation to UKIP's Euro election campaign. An "internal inquiry" under former leader Roger Knapman concluded that Wise's actions had been "honest and honourable throughout".

Here is what Anthony Butcher - a member of the NEC at the time of the original investigation- had to say:

Piers Merchant and Trevor Coleman presented the findings of their initial investigation into Tom Wise (but they had only limited access to bank statements).

In what is surprisingly normal behaviour for the UKIP NEC, the NEC weren't allowed a copy of the written report. Instead, Piers Merchant read it out aloud (we assumed all of it but had no idea). Several of us requested copies so that we could make an informed decision but were refused. Our questions at the end were fobbed off, and Trevor was largely prevented from speaking.

It became very clear that Trevor Coleman, the former Police Inspector, was advocating that we should begin a second stage of investigation into the finances of Wise after they discovered a couple of potentially dodgy looking payments. Piers Merchant advised against further investigation on the grounds that they hadn't uncovered any fraud.

The NEC was split on this and a compromise was reached, proposed by Douglas Denny that the internal investigation would resume after the OLAF investigation had completed and we could retrieve the documentation needed from them.

A couple of months later the OLAF investigation had finished and Roger Knapman informed us (wrongly) that Tom Wise had been found completely innocent. We then had a vote on continuing our own internal investigation, and the majority voted against it (Douglas Denny included).

It should also be noted that Tom Wise had the whip withdrawn only from the UKIP group within the Ind Dem group after his boasts were exposed in the NotW and NOT in relation to this fraud as UKIP is trying to make out. He didn't have his UKIP membership revoked, still sat with the UKIP MEPs, was still and Ind/Dem MEP and still worked with them in Brussels, including co-signing documents. In reality UKIP took no action against him in relation to this fraud.

End of statement.

And here is a list of all those NEC members who voted to end the investigation:

Roger Knapman
Gerard Batten
Nigel Farage
Douglas Denny (switched his vote)
Elizabeth Burton
Alan Bown
Rachel Oxley
John Whittaker
Michael Zuckerman

So can we expect them to resign from UKIP? We are joking as integrity is sadly lacking in any of their lives!

We at Junius fully expect several other UKIP MEPs to find themselves in the same dock as Tom Wise - and that includes Nigel Farage.