Labour MP Apsana Begum found not guilty of housing fraud

A Labour MP wept in court after being found not guilty of housing fraud.

Apsana Begum was on trial for three counts of dishonestly failing to disclose information relating to her council housing application.

Tower Hamlets Council, which brought the prosecution, alleged that the cost to the local authority was £63,928, because someone else on the housing list had to be given accommodation elsewhere.

After jurors found the Poplar and Limehouse MP, 31, not guilty of all charges, she collapsed and wept in the dock at Snaresbrook Crown Court in London.

In a statement after her acquittal, Ms Begum claimed the charged had been ‘maliciously’ brought against her and that she had faces months of abuse and threats to her safety.

She said: ‘This case has been driven by malicious intent and has caused me great distress and damage to my reputation.

‘As a survivor of domestic abuse facing these vexatious charges, the last 18 months of false accusations, online sexist, racist, and Islamophobic abuse, and threats to my safety, have been exceedingly difficult.

‘I also thank the jury for vindicating me, and the judge for presiding over this trial. I will be consulting and considering how to follow up so that something like this doesn’t happen again to anyone else’.

The court had heard that Ms Begum applied to go on the council’s social housing register on July 22, 2011, though the charges related to three periods between January 2013 and March 2016.

She was placed on the priority housing list after claiming to be living in an ‘overcrowded’ three-bedroom house in Poplar with five members of her family and without her own room.

However, the prosecution said the Woodstock Terrace property had four bedrooms, according to both a housing application made by Begum’s aunt in 2009 and a council tax form submitted by her mother in 2013.

Prosecutor James Marsland said Ms Begum had deliberately lied about the number of bedrooms in order to move higher up the housing register and had failed to tell the council that by January 2013 there were only four people living at the address, after her father died and her aunt moved out.

Dozens of Tories 'prepared to rebel against jab passports' as they're quietly introduced

But Ms Begum maintained there had only ever been three bedrooms in the house and that she had never had her own bedroom while living there.

She said she could not explain why her family members had said there were four bedrooms.

Ms Begum also revealed that she was facing a period of turmoil in which she was struggling to come to terms with her father’s death and her Bangladeshi-heritage family’s disapproval of her relationship with her then-partner, Tower Hamlets councillor Ehtasham Haque.

Her defence lawyer, Helen Law, also claimed that the complaint which triggered the investigation of Begum, made in 2019 by Sayed Nahid Uddin – Mr Haque’s brother-in-law – was ‘false’.

Ms Begum had left the property in May 2013 due to her family’s growing hostility towards her plans to marry Mr Haque, who was seven years older than her and twice divorced, the court was told.

During the trial, Ms Begum become emotional when she recalled visiting a police station to report her brother following her to work – and said she feared becoming the victim of honour-based violence.

She told the court that when she returned home that day, she was locked in the living room by her brother, who urged her to visit an imam because he believed she was ‘possessed’.

Ms Begum said she managed to call 999 and fled the house with only her handbag.

She managed to pick up her belongings in black bin bags left outside the house and later married Mr Haque in an Islamic ceremony, before moving in with him.

Prosecutor Mr Marsland had argued Ms Begum had been fully aware of the housing register policies and the fact she was no longer eligible for social housing due to her time working in the town mayor’s office and then as a housing adviser for Tower Hamlets Homes.

Ms Law argued that Ms Begum had no special knowledge of the housing register and had only worked at a low level in both jobs.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.

MORE : Woman who faked heart attack and then shoved paramedic fined just £40