Ken's lying aide quits

Rosemary Emodi, deputy to Mr Livingstone's race adviser Lee Jasper, quit her £100,000-a-year post after taking a free trip to a £200-a-night beach resort.

She went there with Errol Walters, director of two organisations linked to Mr Jasper which have received substantial amounts of City Hall cash.

The trip was apparently arranged after Mr Walters suggested the resort in Nigeria could receive City Hall fundingto bring "youths of African descent from the UK" to "reconnect with their roots" in a youth camp, Kamp Afrika, which is backed by the Greater London Authority.

Last week, the Mayor's office told journalists who found out about the trip that Ms Emodi had not been on it. "This story is totally inaccurate, false and invented," said a City Hall spokesman.

"Rosemary Emodi has never visited Kamp Afrika in Nigeria. She was in London during the dates concerned." As late as yesterday morning, Mr Livingstone himself dismissed the Nigeria trip as "completely and utterly nothing to do with us ... I'm told she [Ms Emodi] wasn't there."

Yesterday afternoon, however, the BBC showed that air travel records revealed Ms Emodi had flown to Nigeria on the dates concerned. Ms Emodi immediately admitted she had lied and resigned.

A statement from the GLA last night said: "It has now become clear that the formal statement made by Rosemary Emodi was untrue. She has resigned with immediate effect."

The statement blamed Ms Emodi for not "honestly answering questions put to [her]".

But one London Labour MP said there were still unanswered questions about the original City Hall denials. Kate Hoey, MP for Vauxhall, said: "Even if the Mayor's office was lied to by Rosemary Emodi, why did they say in their statement last week that she was in London on the dates of the trip, when they must have been able to see that she was not at work?"

Ms Emodi and Mr Walters, who are close friends, spent a long weekend from Friday 30 November to Monday 3 December at the five-star La Campagne Tropicana beach resort near Lagos.

Mr Walters is director of Brixton Base and acting director of the Black Londoners Forum, two projects at the centre of the Evening Standard's investigation into 13 questionable organisations linked to Mr Jasper which have received more than £3.3 million in City Hall money but appear to have done little, if anything, in return.

Brixton Base was set up as a "creative training hub" for ethnic minority Londoners, but ran only three short training courses in two years before suddenly going bust three weeks ago. Staff and students on one of the courses say that City Hall money intended to pay for their training never reached them and also allege they were subjected to actual and attempted intimidation by Brixton Base staff.

Brixton Base is likely to be reported to the police within days after auditors sent by Mr Livingstone's London Development Agency could not account for the £535,000 in City Hall money paid to it. It also owes more than £190,000 in unpaid rent.

The Nigerian newspaper This Day described the La Campagne Tropicana visit as a "facility inspection" and said: "The Greater London Authority has appointed a UK-based provider of top-quality training courses for young black people in the creative industries, Brixton Base Ltd, to co-ordinate the logistics of the attendance of youths of African descent from the United Kingdom during the next edition of the youth camp popularly referred to as Kamp Afrika in Lagos next year."

The newspaper quoted Mr Walters as saying that the youth camp was an initiative of Mr Livingstone's to commemorate the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade and an educational retreat to help British youths of African descent to re-connect with their roots. City Hall today insisted that this was untrue, saying its involvement with Kamp Afrika had been limited to a "purely exploratory" meeting held in October between Mr Jasper, Mr Walters and a Kamp Afrika representative. It said that no mayoral money had been paid to Kamp Afrika and there was "no suggestion" that GLA funds were used for the Nigeria trip. However, although Ms Emodi's and Mr Walters' hotel stay was funded by the resort, questions remain as to who paid for the air fares and Ms Emodi's time. Two of the four days on the trip were working days. Richard Barnes, Tory leader at the London Assembly, said: "What we need answers on now is exactly how much Lee Jasper knew about this trip by his deputy.

"Was he told about it in advance? Did he approve it? Did he give Ms Emodi time off? All this is starting to look like the kind of scandal the Mayor cannot recover from."