Christine Hewitt, who has been found guilty of trying to fiddle her MEP boss’s expenses, has now been sentenced to 40 hours of community service. She has also been sentenced to four months in prison – but this part of the sentence has been suspended for a year.
Christine Hewitt worked as Chief of Staff for UKIP MEP Janice Atkinson. Last year Hewitt was secretly recorded in a Margate restaurant, asking them to give her a false bill for a sum higher than she had actually spent. She was heard to say that “we” overcharge “them” slightly “because that’s the way we repatriate it”. This was understood to mean that the MEP she worked for had a policy of submitting inflated expenses claims in order to put extra money into the pockets of herself and her staff.
UKIP immediately suspended Janice Atkinson, who had been due to fight a Kent seat in last year’s General Election. The incident eventually led to her being expelled from UKIP for “bringing the Party into disrepute”. She now sits as an independent MEP.
Atkinson had previously caused controversy by referring to a constituent who had been born in Thailand as a “ting-tong”. She had also criticised people who have more children than they can personally afford to support. Shortly afterwards, it was revealed that she was £2,000 in arrears on paying child support to her former husband – though her MEP’s salary at that time was just short of £80,000 per year.
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