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Boris told deputy last year not to misuse credit card
Paul Waugh and Andrew Gilligan24.06.09
The City Hall expenses scandal engulfed Boris Johnson personally today after it emerged he had warned his deputy nearly a year ago about his credit card use.
As Greater London Authority chiefs formally referred the case to the police, officials revealed that Ian Clement had been warned for months about misuse of public funds.
The deputy mayor quit in disgrace this week over claims for restaurant meals where his “guests” never appeared. It is alleged that Mr Clement, 44, used taxpayers' cash to wine and dine his 23-year-old lover and today the Standard reveals that he also took her on a £180-a-night trip to Brussels.
The Mayor reprimanded his deputy last August when he discovered that he had used his City Hall credit card to upgrade his flight to the Beijing Olympics. Mr Johnson travelled economy.
The London Assembly's business management and administration committee was told today that the Mayor assumed Mr Clement had stopped using the card. The Mayor's chief of staff Sir Simon Milton told the committee: “After the Mayor discovered that Ian Clement had used the credit card to upgrade his flight to Beijing he told him that he should not have a credit card and he should hand it back.”
However, on 1 June Mr Johnson was told the card had been used to buy personal items.
GLA director of finance Martin Clarke today admitted he had spotted other abuses but failed to inform the Mayor. He said he had first become aware Mr Clement was using the card for personal items last November when he submitted a bill for a sound system for his Jaguar. Mr Clarke said he warned him last year not to use his credit card to take out cash but was ignored.
Mr Clarke said the GLA was today referring the case to Scotland Yard's Economic and Specialist Crime unit.
The Mayor will now be called before the Assembly. It emerged today that he had signed off some of Mr Clement's expenses since April, including a claim for a Brussels lunch that breached GLA rules. Even though he had assumed his deputy had stopped using the card, the Mayor signed off forms headed “GLA corporate credit card log”.
Two sources with close knowledge of Mr Clement's movements today claim he took Tory agent Claire Dowson on at least one official foreign trip to Brussels paid for by the GLA. Mr Clement did not claim for Ms Dowson's travel, but the sources said she stayed in his room at the five-star Renaissance Hotel during the visit, in October last year. Breakfast was also charged to taxpayers. The Standard could not reach Mr Clement for comment.
Reader views (10)
If Boris cannot even manage his own Deputy, why trust him to manage London? LOL
- Frank, Bristol UK
If Boris knew what was going on and took no action until it hit the papers, doesn't that make him an accessory to Fraud? If he didn't know what was going on he is innocent but totally incompetent. He has got form, though. He was the one Tory who spoke up in support of our over-paid, over-bonused and totally incompetent Banking fraternity. Still he'd already been elected and didn't need to adopt the Cameron approach.
- F Skate, Hammersmith England
Shouldn't Boris have sacked him when he found out he had upgraded his booking to Peking? It seems it is easy for Boris to promise to protect Taxpayers' money but difficult for him to stamp out waste and dishonesty by his own hand-picked staff. Yet again the show of anger, just like Cameron's simulated shows of anger, only occurred after the story got into the Press. Why didn't Boris get angry at an earlier time?
- S Lamb, Barnes England
This guy has a wife and kid, but whisks his tory party assitant away for some nookie and we pay the bill? Boris has failed on every count when it comes to vetting his advisors. Ken may well have had problems (bob from cheam), but this new lot have their noses in the muck already! Took years for Ken to screw up this badly!
- John, Muswell
So that's what Boris meant when he promised that if the Tories won London it would improve Londoners' Sex Lives. Most people thought he meant it for all Londoners not just Tory Deputy Mayors.
- S Lamb, Barnes England
Bob from Cheam. What are you on? Of course there were problems under Ken, but this is real slease and the web involves a large number of Tory Boroughs too. Just what David Camron does not need now.
- Richard, London
The same expenses fiddling happened under Livingstone, the difference is that when exposed these guys resign whereas Ken used to defend them and say that nothing untoward was going on. Anyone know whatever happened with that police investigation into community project funding?
- Bob, Cheam
So it would appear that it wasn't just the tax payers of London that got shafted then.
- Al, Kingstown UK
It seems that David Cameron, who is said to have experienced a Good Expenses Scandal Experience, needs to clean up all areas of his Party. It seems fiddling and a private disrespect for Taxpayer's Money go hand-in-hand with Public Declarations of Austerity and a War on Waste from all levels of the Tory Party. I'm sure that Osborne has no plans for the Shadow Cabinet to share in the pain of the Public Austerity Campaign after the next Election.
- S Lloyd, Ealing England
Hope she was worth it matey!
- Frank, Home Counties, England.
