A Rouf Over One's Head!

I reported recently that Cllr Mohammad Rouf was found to be in breach of the members's code of conduct at bent Labour Sandwell Council. There were multiple false declarations of interests in his various register interests relating to (a) his beneficial interest in 88 Shireland Road, Smethwick, (b) his claim to own 33 Trafalgar Road when it was, in fact, a council house and (c) his former occupation as a taxi driver.

My original complaint dealt with the most serious matter of all - the fraudulent transaction when Labour intervened to ensure a valuable building plot was transferred to Rouf's son (posts passim and see below). The most dangerous man in Sandwell Council, the highly-controversial Monitoring Officer Surjit Tour, simply decided himself there was nothing to investigate in that regard!

The findings against Rouf detailed above were made after what purports to have been a "full investigation" but, in the true style of Jan Britton's bent paid service, it is not complete and raises more questions than it answers. There is a mass of further information in previous posts but I will try and stick to new information here as far as possible. Now read on please......

Early voters roll checks show Rouf living at 88 Shireland Road in Smethwick and in multiple register of interest declarations he claimed a beneficial interest in that property even after legal title to that property was transferred to one of his sons on 19th July, 2005 [HM Land Registry]. Rouf continued to claim an interest in the property until 2010 for reasons unknown and again later.

In 2005 or 2006 he bought a house at 23 Wellington Road (probably 2005). He sold that for £125,000 on or around 24th April, 2013. I suspect he sold it as he needed the money for the Florence Road property deal although, of course, he claims he has no interest whatsoever in the house that was built there other than now living in it rent free with his wife.

In July, 2012 he appears to have made a correct register of interests declaration in that there is no mention of 88 Shireland Road but he declares ownership of 23 Wellington Road. A further declaration just five days after the sale of that property has 23 Wellington Road as his address but this is crossed out and, in manuscript, an undated entry reads "house sold".

I should say at this point that Rouf himself spoke to The Skidder last May but gave a totally garbled account of all this. Hard-core readers are referred to my earlier post:

http://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.com/2018/05/mohammad-rouf-speaks_1.html

Imagine the position now. Rouf is homeless and the bent deal on Florence Road is incomplete. But he has £125k in his pocket.....

His 2014 Register of Interests (and may I express my gratitude to employee X at SMBC for sorting all these entries out for me when there was delay via Surjit Tour) shows him as being at 33 Trafalgar Road and this entry is marked in manuscript "council house" though this amendment is undated and could have been added later eg. after my disclosures via this blog.

An informant indicated to me that Rouf was, indeed. living in a Sandwell council house despite his proceeds from the house sale and I did a Land Registry check which confirmed this even though, by now, Rouf was claiming in Register entries of 22/08/14; 25/09/14; 13/11/14 and 12/03/15 that he owned the property.

If you are perplexed by this remember that bent Labour also sorted out a Council property for Cllr (as was) Frear (together with a relative employed by SMBC) and he also tried to conceal that bent deal with a false declaration that he owned the property!

With £125k hanging about it seems highly unlikely that Rouf would have been eligible for council housing having voluntarily disposed of one of his properties. He claimed to The Skidder that he never lived there and that the tenancy was in the name of his mother BUT the SMBC full investigation specifically states that the investigation found that he WAS living at that address. So how exactly did this come about? Rouf has clearly lied to me if what SMBC says is true.

Further, records at Companies House show that as a Director of Smethwick Pakistani Muslim Association Limited  he belatedly filed a change of address on 6th November, 2014 stating his address changed to that of the council house on 19th March, 2013 which is shortly BEFORE the sale of his house at 23 Wellington Road. And he made a further return to Companies House on 15th August, 2015 again giving the council house at Trafalgar Road as his address.

Possible scenario 1 - Rouf applies for council housing shortly before the sale of Wellington Road and claims to have no assets when he knew the sale of Wellington Road was going through (with or without the connivance of Cooper, the comrades and/or Jan Britton's bent paid service)? Surely not from such a pillar of the local society what with all his voluntary work at the Midnight Pharmacy and all!

Possible scenario 2 - he moves in with his mother who is indeed the tenant?

Possible scenario 3 - Cooper and the comrades sort him out with a council house whilst the bent Florence Road deal is going through and the house being built? This would explain why the original handwritten note "council house" disappears in later register interests as this fact is deliberately concealed.

(Corrupt West Midlands Police were asked to investigate the false register entries but failed to do so. By the time my complaint was upheld with regard to this the time for any possible prosecution had expired. The bent Blues say this was not deliberate but "accidental due to ignorance of the law"!!!!!! There is no public evidence that they have ever investigated the Florence Road sale and no-one apparently has been interviewed under caution about that).

Curiously, in the March, 2015 declaration Rouf not only declared an interest in the council house but, after a gap of many years, also in 88 Shireland Road again!?!? He did not say so but the property had indeed been "sold" by his son but to his mother, Saleeman Begum ie Rouf's wife on 12th February, 2015 [HM Land Registry].

Clearly there seems to be confusion even within the Rouf family as to who really owns 88 Shireland Road as this 2016 planning application shows. Someone seems to have forgotten who the actual owner was at the time and a speedy amendment was called for "lol"!

[Stories like this involve payments of fees to the Land Registry etc. Small donations of £3 or £4 will help me to continue this scrutiny. Please use the donate button on the right-hand side of you can help If you are reading this on a phone you need to click through to the web-version to find the donate button. Cheques to "J Saunders" also welcome to the address below. Thank you.]

Of course, the late Smethwick scumbag and Labour "leader" Darren Cooper ordered the removal of the plot at Florence Road from auction sale so that it could be sold to one of Rouf's sons. Bizarrely, this fell through. The comrades then decided to sell via sealed bids. Despite considerable local interest in the large plot there were only two valid bids. Happily the "winner" was another of Rouf's sons who paid much less than SMBC had paid for the site and shoe-horned a huge 7-bedroom house onto the property amongst terraced housing with no difficulties via the planning process...

But something kept niggling away at The Skidder. Although the SMBC website says that Rouf was first elected on to the kleptocracy on 2nd May, 2002 there is no Register of Interests declaration until 15th June, 2005 (employee X has diligently searched and either there wasn't one - ? - or it has gone missing). This is shortly before the sale of 88 Shireland Road to his son and so Rouf appears to correctly claim ownership of 88 Shireland at the time of the 2005 declaration. He seems to have bought 23 Wellington Road by this date since he also declares ownership of that property.

Mo is not the sharpest tool in the box even by the standards of the comrades yet was soon being placed on committees of all sorts (gaining the extra "special responsibility payments" that go with these sinecures). He is said to be related to ex-Councillor Mahboob Hussain (though fairly distantly) and was great pals with the former wife-beater, Cooper.

I just wondered if I could find out how long Rouf had actually owned 88 Shireland but this involves an historic Land Registry search (£7) and one has to apply for details of ownership on a specific date so that it can be a gamble as to what information one ends up getting. I should add here that last Monday night outside the Labour Group meeting I asked Mo "who owned 88 Shireland Road before your son?" to which he replied, "I don't know"!

So on 15th June, 2015 Mo was claiming ownership of 88 Shireland Road in a legal declaration. Well if he DID own it as at that date then he had only done so for a very short time since the legal owner as at 1st May, 2005 [HM Land Registry] was in fact (sound the trumpets) one, er, Mahboob Hussain who had owned the property since 1993!

On the assumption that this is the same Mahboob Hussain who was Councillor Hussain then there has been a very serious failure to declare interests here. I can find no trace of Rouf declaring, between his election in 2002 and the sale of 88 Shireland to his son in July, 2005, that Cllr Hussain was actually his landlord! WTF has been going here?

[Addendum 11/04/19 - it seems this Mahboob Hussain is NOT the former councillor. I am informed that the Mahboob Hussain who owned the house is Rouf's brother. This still begs the question why Rouf claimed ownership?]

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