Four Labour activists charged with trying to fix candidate selection process

Police bring criminal case over alleged manipulation of party database in Croydon East constituency Four Labour activists have been charged over allegations that a party database was manipulated to increase a candidate’s chance of selection. The four include Joel Bodmer, 40, who ran as a potential candidate for the Croydon East constituency in south London but later withdrew. He is charged with perverting the course of justice for allegedly altering phone records. He and two others from Croydon – Shila Bodmer, 41, and Carole Bonner, 69 – are accused with Gabriel Leroy, a 24-year-old from Southwark, of offences linked to computer misuse. The Metropolitan police said the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) authorised the charges after an investigation by the force’s cybercrime unit into allegations that a Labour party database was manipulated to increase a candidate’s chances of selection in Croydon East. The four are due to appear at Westminster magistrates court on 19 May, charged with an offence under the Criminal Law Act 1977 and the Computer Misuse Act 1990. Frank Ferguson, the head of the CPS’s special crime and counter-terrorism division, said: “Our prosecutors have worked to esta