“It is going on under our noses in the heart of the capital city and no one is doing a thing about it,” says Peter Golds, the leader of the opposition in Tower Hamlets. “The authorities — the Government, the Electoral Commission — seem paralysed. This is a test for us all about whether democracy can be bought.”
In 2010, after investigations by The Sunday Telegraph, the then Tower Hamlets council leader, Lutfur Rahman, was replaced, deselected and later expelled by the Labour Party because of his close links to an extremist Muslim group, the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE), based at the radical East London Mosque.
.... Poplar Town Hall is a case in point. A large and attractive Victorian listed building, a stone’s throw from Canary Wharf and steps from a future Crossrail station, it is worth millions. But The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that in 2011 the council sold it for £875,000, little more than what a three-bedroom Victorian house in the neighbourhood would cost. Poplar Town Hall, though, is big enough for its new owners to be converting it to a 25-bedroom hotel. [The Telegraph] Read more
