Watkins cash jibe ‘nonsense’

TENSE times . . . the election count with Elwyn Watkins (front) and Phil Woolas, (centre back)

ELECTION TRIAL 3

ELWYN Watkins effectively bankrolled his election campaign because the local Lib-Dem party was skint, it was claimed.

Gavin Millar QC, for Mr Woolas, said, since being selected in September, 2007, to May, 2010, Mr Watkins donated £38,904 to the Lib-Dems — a similar amount to the £37,852 of his election campaign.

Mr Watkins admitted he paid for rent, leaflets and even £4,720 for stamps when the local party did not have the immediate funds to cover it.

Mr Millar said that in the last nine years £167,836 had been donated to the local Lib-Dems overall — so his contribution was nearly a quarter of that in less than three years.

He said it meant the cash-strapped party could focus its funds on other candidates.

Mr Watkins said: “There are occasions when we’re short of money as we’re not paid by the unions or big business.”

But he insisted he was not the major donator to his campaign.

He dismissed as “total nonsense” the suggestion that he was in the privileged position to pay because of money he was earning that year from a Sheikh.

Mr Watkins, who worked in Saudi Arabia for four years and Germany for two years, is a business analyst and financial advisor to Saudi Arabian Sheikh Abdullah Alhamrani.

He said the Sheikh had bought plants, equipment and professional services from the UK but had no other political or business interests in the UK so would have no interest in funding his campaign for Parliament.

Mr Watkins was a Rochdale borough councillor from September, 2007, to March, 2010, when he left to concentrate on his general election campaign. Had admitted he had missed six council meetings while working in Saudi Arabia for six months.

But he was upset by a Labour press release — which he labelled a dirty dossier — that claimed he had abandoned his constituents by moving to the Middle East.

He was also angered by another press release claiming he was a “single man that lives alone with his mother” — saying he hadn’t lived with his mother for 30 years and it questioned his sexuality.


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