From the Sunday Times:
The leader of the Conservative MEPs, Giles Chichester, has channelled almost £500,000 in parliamentary allowances through a family firm founded by his father, the yachtsman Sir Francis Chichester.
Company documents reveal that since 1996 Chichester has paid the company £445,000 for services “in connection with secretarial and assistant services for the European parliament, constituency and committee work”.
Chichester has been in discussions with the parliament over whether the payments represent a conflict of interest.
Some of it – from an annual MEP staff allowance of about £160,000 – was previously made through the firm to staff, including his wife, to carry out secretarial services. But in recent years he has stopped paying staff through the company – because he says it attracted too much Vat – while continuing to make the parliamentary payments to the firm.
The rest of the story is here.
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Deafening silence from the Conservatives so far (as well as LibDems it seems, current company excepted). Maybe we just expect this kind of thing now.