Revealed: Tory town mayor who paid £6,500 from her OWN savings to bail out ... trends now
This is the woman who bailed out scandal-hit MP Mark Menzies with £6,500 from her personal bank account after he rang a colleague at 3.15am saying he needed money urgently to pay to ‘bad people’.
Shirley Green is a Conservative Mayoress in Menzies’ Lancashire constituency who apparently found herself awoken early the following morning by a 78-year-old party colleague who was concerned after her early hours call from Menzies.
That unnamed pensioner was calling Mrs Green because she herself had just been rung hours earlier by their local MP apparently in great distress about what might happen to him if he didn’t come up with the money immediately.
Mrs Green, 57, the MP’s office manager, then paid out £6,500 from her personal savings to ‘bad men’ said to be holding Mr Menzies hostage, and was apparently later reimbursed from Conservative Party funds raised from donors.
Mr Menzies, one of PM Rishi Sunak's trade envoys, is said to have called the unnamed elderly former campaign manager in his Blackpool and Fylde constituency in the early hours one morning in December, claiming he was locked in a flat and needed £5,000 as a matter of 'life and death'.
Mark Menzies pictured with Micky and Minnie Mouse at the St Anne's Carnival in his local Lancashire constituency last year
Shirley Green (left) with Mark Menzies and councillor Karen Harrison at St Annes Charity Carnival in July last year
The unnamed woman refused and is said to have told the MP she would speak to his office manager Mrs Green first thing in the morning.
A few hours later the sum demanded, which by then had risen to £6,500, was paid by Mrs Green, the Tory Mayor of Fylde Town Council, from her ISA savings and subsequently reimbursed from donor funds in an account named Fylde Westminster Group, it is alleged.
The scandal is now being investigated by Conservative Party bosses, along with some £14,000 given by donors for Tory campaign activities which was previously transferred to Mr Menzies’s personal bank account and used for his private medical expenses, according to The Times.
Tory party chiefs are said to have been aware of the allegations of potential fraud for more than three months.
The MP was accused of paying for sex from a male escort in 2014.
A source close to MP Menzies told The Times about the recent incident that Menzies had met a man on an online dating website and gone to the man’s flat, before subsequently going with another man to a second address where he continued drinking.
He was sick at one point and several people at the address demanded £5,000, claiming it was for cleaning up and other expenses.
The source said the MP decided to pay them because he was scared of what would happen otherwise, but did not have the funds to transfer the money from his own savings. His aides gave him money
