London: Indian-origin British Labour MP Keith Vaz, who on Tuesday resigned from the Home Affairs Select Committee of the UK government following revelations that he paid for sex with male prostitutes, now has another problem on his hands.
An investigation has revealed that Vaz’s property empire is estimated to be worth more than £4million, whereas his income from all sources comes to only about £90,000, a report in The Mirror said.
He earns £74,926 as an MP and received a £15,025 top-up as Home Affairs Select Committee chairman, making a total of just around £90,000.
In the last 16 years, Vaz has declared income from outside sources of just £1950, in addition to rent worth more than £10,000 a year from one of his flats.
Yet, Vaz and his wife Maria own seven properties between them, said the Mirror report.
They jointly own a family home whose worth is thought to be around £2.1million. The couple bought the house in North West London for £1.1 million back in 2005.
Last December, Mrs Vaz paid £465,000 for a flat in Pimlico, Central London, and six months later, her husband bought a flat in Edgware, North London, for £387,500 – where he proceeded to meet and have sex with male escorts. He also owns two homes in a street in Leicester, of which one has been sold on contract and the other is an inheritance from his mother who died in 2003.
A Central London flat bought by Vaz and his wife in 2004 cost £5,45,000. Maria also owns an office building in London – a law firm costing £4,85,000 in 2010. She heads the small immigration law firm in London and makes only about £60,000 a year – hardly sufficient to buy all the property the Vaz family has purchased.
Four years ago, a police probe found that between 1996 and 2001 almost £500,000 was deposited into a series of bank accounts belonging to Keith Vaz. He had 7 or 8 mortgages over the same period, but managed to make mortgage payments in excess of his salary. At the time, Vaz had claimed that his money came from property dealings. He claimed the information in police documents was incorrect, and the probe was dropped.
The report says that Vaz bought his first property in Leicester for £24,000 in 1985, two years before he became an MP.
Meanwhile, the Charity Commission has contacted the Sunday Mirror asking for more information about money given to the escorts by Vaz, who apart from sex also paid them to buy illegal drugs.
Two payments were made to the prostitutes by Daniel Dragusin, who works for the Silver Star organization, a charity Vaz started after he was diagnosed with diabetes in 2007. But Dragusin may not have been aware what the payments were for. He has denied that they were made out of the charity’s fund.
The Charity Commission has however contacted the Silver Star for more information in the matter.
On August 24 a bank account nominated by the two male prostitutes was credited with £150 from Dragusin’s account. This came less than 24 hours after Vaz agreed to pay £150 for a night with the men. An earlier deposit for £150 had been made on August 5. But the Silver Star states that no money was taken from its account.
The case goes on.
