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The man who blew the whistle in U.K.

LONDON: The man behind the Telegraph newspaper’s expose of the MPs’ expenses scandal that has plunged British politics into unprecedented turmoil and prompted calls for a snap general election was on Saturday identified as a Sandhurst-trained former army officer John Wick, who now runs a private intelligence agency.

Mr. Wick, whose name had been previously mentioned as the possible source of The Telegraph stories, confirmed that he was the whistleblower but refused to disclose who in the Commons leaked the information to him and whether the newspaper paid him for his services. He said he was given a “hard drive which contained details of every MP’s expense claims over the past four years” by those who had been “directly” involved in processing the data of MPs’ claims and were “shocked and appalled by what they were seeing”.

“I was being asked whether I could release the information into the public debate,” Mr. Wick told The Telegraph which has so far published details of some 200 MPs. He said he agreed to do so because he was convinced that it was in public interest to expose the way the MPs had been “abusing” the system. Mr. Wick, a strong Conservative supporter and is close to senior party leaders, said he put his “political allegiances to one side” in the larger public interest.

“This was a scandal across the political spectrum with some Conservative MPs’ behaviour as reprehensible as their Labour counterparts….the Conservatives would have to accept the consequences with the other parties,” he said.

Mr. Wick said he approached several other newspapers before finally plumping for The Telegraph on the basis that it would “treat the story in a balanced manner”.

The scandal has caused nationwide anger with calls for MPs to be “punished” at the next election.

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