Tanveer Qureshi achieves a Not Guilty verdict in electoral malpractice case
Tanveer Qureshi achieved a Not Guilty verdict in a week-long trial involving allegations of electoral malpractice. A jury took less than 3 hours to find elected councillor and leader of council not guilty of corruption in an election.
Russell Bowden, a Labour party councillor and leader of Warrington Borough Council was charged with an offence contrary to §65A of the Representation of Peoples Act 1982.It was alleged Mr Bowden had deliberately lied on his nomination form by stating a false address in order to portray himself as a local man in the 2021 local elections.Throughout the proceedings, Tanveer has argued, that there was no legal definition of home address and the CPS’s understanding of home address, namely a place limited to where one lives and sleep was wrong.
One month before the trial started, the CPS finally conceded they had applied the wrong legal test but pressed on with the case suggesting there was still overwhelming evidence that Mr Bowden had lied. The jury took less than three hours to clear Mr Bowden
