Mayor suspends aide at centre of LDA scandal
London Mayor Livingstone has suspended Lee Jasper, his race adviser, pending a police investigation
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
Mayor defends aide in LDA grants scandal