UKIP MEP expenses swindler Tom Wise has been jailed for two years after stealing £39,000 of taxpayers’ money which he spent on wine and a car for himself.

The UKIP MEP claimed a “secretarial assistance allowance” of £3,000 per month for just over a year. The “assistant” was his “researcher” Lindsay Jenkins, who was charged alongside Mr Wise.

Mrs Jenkins was, however, only paid £500 per month. The rest was put into a secret bank account owned by the UKIP MEP. He managed to carry on the swindle for 13 months before being caught out. If Mr Wise had not been caught, he would have eventually stolen more than £180,000 from the taxpayer.

The police investigation found that the UKIP MEP had spent £3,500 of taxpayers’ cash on 19 cases of fine wine. He had used a further £6,800 to pay off his personal credit card bills and another £6,400 on a Peugeot 206 motor car.

The UKIP MEP also spent more than £1,200 of taxpayer money paying for UKIP leaflet distribution. A further £800 was used to pay UKIP leaflet printing costs.

Mr Wise originally denied the charges, but halfway through his trial confessed in what turned out to be a successful attempt to divert the blame to himself and get Mrs Jenkins off the hook.

Passing judgement, the trial court judge told the UKIP MEP that the offence “involved a prolonged gross breach of that trust.

“It is no exaggeration to say that you had hardly got your feet beneath your desk as an MEP before you were planning to defraud the parliament to which you were elected and the people you were elected to serve.

“This was very deliberate and blatant dishonesty. This offence came to an end not because your conscience got the better of you, but only because your activities were exposed by the press, after which time you terminated the claim and repaid your ill-gotten gains in the hope of avoiding prosecution.”

* During the June Euro election campaign, UKIP leader Nigel Farage admitted to taking more than £2 million worth of expenses from the EU.

* UKIP’s sole Member of Parliament, Bob Spink, has been exposed as a parliamentary expenses trough feeder like all other parties’ MPs, with an impressive expenses claim of £140,987 over and above his ordinary salary.

Mr Spink, who is still listed on the UKIP website as an “enthusiastic member and supporter of UKIP,” last year took home a delightful £23,083 in housing allowances, £13,356 in office allowances, £82,472 in staffing  allowances (nearly one of the largest such “staffing” expenses of all MPs, making one wonder what huge staff this single MP employs), £1,005 on “central stationery,” £4,845 on IT provision, £1,148 on staff cover and £9,017 on travel (he obviously travels a lot).

* Sitting UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom uses his Euro parliamentary staff allowance to pay three assistants who are also mysteriously employed at an investment company in which he is a major shareholder. Mr Bloom employs his 20-year-old niece and two other members of staff at TBO Investments in which he holds a 20 percent share.

Mr Bloom has been questioned by a senior Euro parliamentary official about a “possible conflict of interest with the employment contracts” because the three people he claimed were working for him in Brussels were also known to be working at the TBO offices in Yorkshire at the same time.