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Nigel Paul Farage is an English politician, and United Kingdom Independence Party member of the European Parliament for South East England. He is a founder member of the party, and has contested UK Parliamentary elections twice, retaining his deposit both times. He was elected to the European Parliament in 1999 and re-elected in 2004. He is currently leader of the eleven-strong UKIP contingent in the European Parliament, and co-leader of the multinational eurosceptic group, Independence and Democracy.
On 18 November 2004 he was threatened with arrest for announcing in the European Parliament that Jacques Barrot, the French Commissioner designate, had been barred from elected office in France for 2 years, after being convicted in 2000 of embezzling £2 million from government funds and diverting it into the coffers of his party. He claimed that French President Jacques Chirac had granted Barrot presidential amnesty, making it illegal under French law to even mention the conviction. Farage was widely attacked for his comments and warned of legal consequences, but refused to withdraw. The following day it was confirmed that Barrot had received an 8 month suspended jail sentence in the case, and that this had been immediately expunged by Chirac's amnesty. The Commission's president, Jose Manuel Barroso admitted that he had not known of Barrot's criminal record when appointing him as a Commission vice-president.[1] (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/21/nbook21.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/11/21/ixhome.html) The Socialist and Liberal groups in the European Parliament then demanded the sacking of Barrot for failing to disclose the conviction during his confirmation hearings.[2] (http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=625001§ion=news)
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