Statement from Ashley Mote following trial at Southwark Crown Court15 May 2015
The verdicts against me, delivered after the jury’s lunch and deliberations lasting a mere 90 minutes or so, surprised and shocked me and my legal team.
The trial lasted a full four weeks. It was overwhelmed by hundreds of pages of detailed numerical analysis, much of it disputed. In the end, my five successive days of cross-examination and all the defence evidence and rebuttal counted for nothing. It was obviously ignored.
I am advised we have good grounds for an appeal, and work is starting on it immediately. Meanwhile, the judge has called for reports.
As my many supporters already know, I spent five years after my unexpected election to the European Parliament in 2004 fighting tirelessly towards the UK leaving the EU lunatic asylum, and meanwhile trying to protect the interests of constituents in SE England. Millions of Brits want the UK’s independence and freedom as a global trading nation restored. That was my aim, too.
As my eBook memoirs A Mote in Brussels’ Eye prove in great detail, I was increasingly supported in Brussels by a growing number of bureaucrats turned whistle-blowers, and others, who wanted the EU’s institutionalised corruption and mismanagement cleaned up. During those five years I spent enormous amounts of time and money pursuing that aim. The jury heard little of it.
Despite being based on my daily diary, the book itself was not allowed as evidence in court, except a few specific extracts relating to previous evidence.
This was a huge handicap, as were two other obstacles put in my way by the current judicial system. Despite being 79 and with serious, medically diagnosed, memory problems, I was not permitted to use notes in the witness box. Even worse was the prosecution’s freedom to use my court case in 2007, when the EU tried to exploit a legal situation to unseat me, as evidence against me in this case, too. I have effectively been tried twice on the issue of my benefit claim when I was out of work 20 years ago.
Together with the understandable current climate of cynicism against anyone in politics, with hindsight these factors combined to make a successful defence virtually impossible.
Surprised at the outcome? Yes. Bitter at the current judicial system? Yes. Beaten? No.
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