London Mayor Ken Livingstone has suspended Lee Jasper, his race adviser, after the aide asked the mayor to refer to the Metropolitan Police ‘all allegations made against him in the Evening Standard’ newspaper, regarding misuse of London Development Agency (LDA) grants.
Jasper called for the police investigation to clear his name, according to an e-mail statement from the mayor last Friday. The mayor maintains neither he nor his staff has acted improperly, according to Bloomberg.com.
In an interview with the African British newspaper The Voice, Jasper said the London assembly was ‘guilty of gross dereliction of duty’ regarding the issues raised in the Evening Standard. ‘Nobody can understand why, over the past 10 weeks, they haven’t summoned me, which is in their power to do, to answer these questions,’ he said.
Jasper denied he had influenced the process at the LDA to get funding. ‘There has been no financial impropriety. I had nothing to do with the decision making process of the LDA when it came to Brixton Base and certainly not the other organisations. It is not my role to get involved in the formal decision making process for the LDA. The projects are assessed on the basis of strict criteria that is applied equally to all organisations,’ he said.
Further reading:
Livingstone loses temper over LDA questioning
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