Shelina Akhtra: Tory Tower Hamlets Councillors call for action by the mysteriously powerful Ms Isabella Freeman

Shelina Akhtar: Tory Tower Hamlets Councillors call for action by the mysteriously powerful Ms Isabella Freeman.

The person is of course the self-appointed but totally secretive and unaccountable Isabella Freeman. She is kept in a very highly paid post with no one in the Council auditing her at all.
No wonder then that it has been Isabella freeman who has been sitting on her comfy post while Shelina has been getting on with “her stuff”!!!!!!!!!!
Question is what on earth is Isabella Freeman in that post for? And who gave her the authority to designate herself the “Monitor” IN THE FIRST PLACE? Is that how she “monitors” when the likes of Shelina Akhtar get away with the thefts, the lies, the deceptions that have now been admitted by the perpetrating person? And NOT by Isabella Freeman?

How many OTHERS have been doing how many other thefts while sitting on the Council or getting paid as “officers” employed in the name of the voters and the community who in fact hold the main democratic claim on the Council but are fobbed off, frustrated and lied to by the bands that Isabella Freeman is supposedly the Monitor on?

Sack Isabella Freeman, we say!

[To be continued]

BHANGEELAAR! the Campaign against an elected executive mayor in Tower Hamlets today [Wednesday 18 January 2012] received the following copy of Tory Cllr Peter Golds letter dated 16 January 2012 addressed to Isabella freeman

Ms Isabella Freeman

Monitoring Officer

London Borough of Tower Hamlets

Mulberry Place

Clove Crescent

London

E14 2BG

16^th January 2012

Dear Ms Freeman

Re: Shelina Akhtar (Aktar)

I am writing with regard to the motion to council submitted by myself and Cllr Archer on behalf of our group. Mr Williams has spoken to me and I have agreed an amendment, merely calling for this corrupt and disgraced individual to resign her membership of this council as I was told that as a council “we cannot suspend her”.

Shelina Akhtar was elected Labour councillor for the Spitalfields and Banglatown ward in May 2010 giving her address as 37 Toynbee Street, E1. During April 2010, after her selection, the number of electors at 37 Toynbee Street increased and subsequently all voted in the election.

Following her election she demanded that her name be changed on council records to Shelina Aktar and quickly left the Labour Party, joining the Independent group supporting the candidature of Cllr Lutfur Rahman as Executive Mayor.

In July 2010 Shelina Akhtar of 112 Blackwall Way, E14 was convicted on three counts of benefit fraud. Of course, had anybody merely researched the name Shelina Akhtar she might have escaped public scrutiny as she had insisted all entries on her regarding council information be changed to Aktar. Luckily for the public this ruse failed.

In April 2011 she was charged on three counts of failing to notify a change of circumstances, which would have affected her entitlement to benefit.

Shelina Akhtar of Blackwall Way is the same Shelina Aktar of 37 Toynbee Street. She currently appears to occupy two properties. In one case receiving a councillor’s allowance and in the other being convicted for fraud, whilst varying the name to, hopefully, prevent discovery.

In January 2012 she pleaded guilty to further charges of benefit fraud and is awaiting sentence.

She has without a shadow of doubt, brought this authority into disrepute.

I am therefore surprised that our existing Standards process has made no recommendation about her position. They currently have the power to suspend her membership of this council, indeed a councillor has recently been suspended for reasons which seem, somewhat arcane. I know for fact that there are at least five current investigations being undertaken by Standards which are vexatious and driven by malice on the part of councillors from the Independent members of whom Shelina Akhtar (Aktar) has been an active member as late as December 2011, attending Mayoral engagements and “group” meetings on a monthly basis.

The fact that she has been found guilty on two occasions (the first within two months of being elected) should have ensured that the Standards Committee met and considered her situation.

There are concerns amongst councillors and residents that her position will be supported to provide a prop for the Mayor in the budget process. How will this show Tower Hamlets if the Mayoral budget is approved on the vote of a convicted benefit fraudster?

She is convicted. This information is public; surely the Standards Committee could meet and take action before January 25th. After all they cannot change the verdict as she admitted a plea of guilty. They have also had eighteen months from the first conviction to consider her bringing the council into disrepute.

One reason the Standards regime has been fallen into disrepute nationally are the number of simply vexatious complaints which have seen councillors suspended for misplaced remarks or foolish “tweets”. Here we have a law breaker, who now appears to be permitted to take part in the budget process of an elective body spending over £1billion of public money.

In any other body, she would have been suspended. Why not here?

Yours sincerely

(Cllr) Peter Golds