Gun Culture

Thursday, November 18, 2004

More EU corruption

If you were ever in any doubt as to what a shifty bunch of corrupt bastards the EU bigwigs are have a read of this press release which describes how UKIP MEP Nigel Farage exposes the corrupt past of Jacques Barrot.

UKIP MEP threatened with arrest for telling truth to European Parliament

UKIP MEP Nigel Farage, the co-president of the Independence & Democracy
Group in the European Parliament, was this morning threatened with legal
action by the Parliament’s President  for telling the truth about the French
Commissioner designate, Jacques Barrot.

Mr Farage had asked fellow MEPs whether they would ‘buy a used car from this
man’, when he revealed that M. Barrot had been sentenced to an 8 month
suspended sentence and was barred from elected office in France for 2 years,
after being convicted in 2000 of embezzling  FFR 25m (US$ 3.8m) from
government funds by diverting it into the coffers of his party.

French President Jacques Chirac subsequently granted M Barrot a presidential
amnesty, making it illegal under French law to even mention the conviction.
However, Mr Farage felt it was proper that MEPs were informed of the past of
the Vice President designate, and used his speech in the Strasbourg chamber
to do so.

Many French MEPs were not aware of the conviction, as in compliance with
French law it was totally censored from the French media.

The President of the European Parliament, Spaniard Josep Borrell, warned Mr
Farage that he should withdraw his remarks, as he may face ‘legal
consequences’. Mr Farage, who in theory enjoys Parliamentary immunity while
speaking in the chamber, refused to do so, and was, amazingly, condemned by
other MEPs for telling the truth.

Mr Farage said, “Yesterday, the Court of Auditors refused to sign off the EU
’s accounts for the 10th year in a row, because 93.5% of the EU’s
expenditure was, in their words, ‘unsafe or riddled with errors’.

“Today, the European Parliament is prepared to overlook the conviction of  a
senior member of the Commission for embezzling government funds, and is
prepared instead to threaten with arrest the person who reveals it.

“What clearer indication can there possibly be of the corruption and
hypocrisy which pervades the entire European project from the lowest to the
highest levels?” ENDS

Notes to Editors:
For further information, please contact :
Nigel Farage MEP,

Mark Croucher, UKIP Press Officer,

What a crazy place where an institutionally corrupt organization proposes to appoint a convicted corrupt offical to high office and then censures and threatens with arrest an elected representative for exposing this.  However given that the EU sacks those who blow the whilstle on bent accounting practice, we should not be at all surprised.