Disgraced ex-MEP to repay £345,289
By politics.co.uk staff
A former Tory MEP has been ordered to repay £345,289 to the European parliament.
The European court of justice ordered Den Dover, expelled from his party in 2008 for allegedly abusing the expenses system, to repay the amount in “unjustified” claims.
The European parliament had demanded repayment of £538,000, which the legislature said Mr Dover had falsely claimed in allowances.
But the court ruled there was not enough evidence to demand a full repayment.
Mr Dover represented the north-west England region in the EU parliament from 1999 until 2009, when he stood down to launch an appeal against the allegations.
During his time as an MEP, a total of £959,446 from Mr Dover’s allowances was sent to a company called MP Holdings, which names the MEPs wife and daughter as directors.
He was subsequently expelled from the Conservative party after an investigation by the European parliament’s secretary-general found that only £421,156 of his expenses claims could be justified, ordering the remaining £538,290 be returned to the parliament’s coffers.
The ex-MEP claimed that the parliament was aware of his family’s role in his company and had retrospectively imposed the need to justify expenses claims.
He said the parliament had never “implemented a transparent system setting out clear preconditions for reimbursement of parliamentary assistance expenditure or required members to produce documentary evidence of their parliamentary assistance expenditure”.
