Expenses 'mole' not exactly a beacon of moral guidance

The man who exposed MPs as thieving, treacherous scumbags is himself a thieving, treacherous scumbag, we can almost exclusively reveal.

Former SAS swashbuckler John Wick, who counts a number of Tory grandees amongst his closest circle of money grabbing chums, initially attempted to sell a stolen data disk containing expenses details of 650 MPs to a number of newspapers for a reported £300,000.

But Wick was burned when thieving, treacherous scumbags at The Daily Express, with whom he had agreed a £10,000 payment in exchange for Jacqui Smith's expenses information, refused to pay up in the knowledge that he wouldn't have a leg to stand on if he pursued the payment in court. It is thought he had approached the newspaper with a contract written in crayon on the back of a fag packet.

The twice-married 60 year old - pictured right carrying a bag full of dirty laundry - eventually sold the entire list of thieving MP scumbags to the fine, upstanding men at The Daily Telegraph for the knock-down price of £100,000, or £153 per scoundrel. He says he 'was motivated by a sense of public duty'; the Telegraph says it was also acting in the public interest by publishing expenses in a deliciously teasing day-by-day circulation-bolstering scumfest.

However, Wick has left a slimy trail of failed businesses and unpaid taxes on the road to his reinvention as dutiful public crusader - his 16 failed companies have amassed an expense-busting £7m of debt and left scores of ex-associates out of pocket. Two former army colleagues unfortunate enough to enter into partnership with him have together had almost £150,000 scumbagged off them thanks to Wick's commercial failings.

His rubbish business sense and taste for setting up hopeless new ventures has earned him a reputation for 'phoenixing' - the term for businesses that collapse only to be started up afresh with new names shortly afterwards. Debts Wick has left in his cash-haemorrhaging wake include an outrageous £34.56 owed to his milkman and a sexy £35 unpaid to the Shangri-La guest house in Whitley Bay. Sources claim he is 'pathologically incapable of saving money', and is regularly seen lighting Cuban cigars with £50 notes.

Telegraph buys stolen personal data

Bastion of conservative values and defender of British citizens' right to privacy The Telegraph has paid up to £300,000 for 650 cleaning bills.

The stolen data disk which held the bills along with various other expense claims made by money grabbing MPs for such frivolities as ivory toilet seats and new boilers had originally been offered to less reputable tabloid newspapers such as The Daily Express and The Sun, but the low-brow publications had declined to do business with the anonymous data tout.

A source from The Express said: 'He said to meet him down by the docks with a brown envelope containing £300k in unmarked bills, and not to bring any friends. He spoke through a Darth Vader voice changer and sounded a bit scary so I said no.'

The information contained on the disk was 'unredacted', meaning that ministers' private mobile phone numbers, phone records, and contact details of any contractors who had carried out work at their houses was stored alongside costs.

The expense records had initially also been offered by the mole at £10,000 per minister as part of a Pokemon style collectable series. The Sunday Express agreed to buy a copy of Jacqui Smith's expenses, details of which it subsequently published in March.

However, when the mole called to arrange payment, he was told that everybody at The Express was on holiday and didn't know anything about any Jacqui Smith expenses story anyway so stop calling.

The incident prompted the source to devise a new contract with stricter confidentiality rules and the threat of 'sleeping with the fishes' if it happened again.

The Telegraph claims the case reveals a 'lack of moral leadership' on the part of the ministers in question.