The verdict comes after a ten-year probe into Brussels-based networks linked to Farage’s UK Independence Party
A criminal court in Brussels has convicted two donors to a think tank linked to Nigel Farage of misusing EU funds.
The two Polish men, economist Marian Szolucha and Daniel Pawlowiec, who was working as a parliamentary assistant to a far-right Polish MEP until September, were convicted yesterday.
The court said transfers of €119,960 (£105,600) to Szolucha and Pawlowiec had no legitimate link to any official EU-activity, with one of the defendants using the proceeds to buy property.
The verdict comes after a ten-year probe into Brussels-based networks linked to Farage’s UK Independence Party and other populist movements that were active prior to Brexit.
According to Euractiv, in 2014, Belgian authorities received a tip-off alleging financial wrongdoing by Mischaël Modrikamen, a far-right Belgian lawyer closely linked to Farage.
Two entities, the Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe (ADDE), of which Farage’s UKIP was the largest member, and its affiliated think tank, the Institute for Direct Democracy in Europe (IDDE), received €2 million in EU funding.
Modrikamen and his wife were later cleared. However, Belgian investigators found that around €100,000 had been channelled through UK and Cypriot firms connected to ADDE and IDDE before reaching the two Polish defendants.
In 2015, Pawlowiec donated €12,000 to ADDE. In the same year, Szolucha, who was a financial consultant to one of the Farage-linked political groups, donated €3,000 to ADDE.
Laure Ferrari, Farage’s partner, was also initially implicated in the case as she was a day-to-day manager and later as an executive director at the IDDE, before the group went into liquidation.
Ferrari was cleared of wrongdoing at the procedural stage and is no longer subject to prosecution.
Ferrari was recently embroiled in a controversy regarding Farage’s property in his constituency of Clacton in Essex.
While Farage initially said he bought the house, he later said she bought the £885,000 property outright with her own money.
Because the property was bought in Ferrari’s name, Farage, who also owns homes in Kent and Surrey, avoided paying the stamp duty surcharge applied to second homes.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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