Ashley Mote faces the prospect of prison after a jury convicted him on 21 counts of defrauding taxpayers by taking around £73,000 over six years – including housing and council tax benefits he received from Chichester District Council.

But the MEP for the south east has pledged he will appeal against his conviction.

At Portsmouth Crown Court, Judge Richard Price confiscated the politician's personal passports as well as special diplomatic documents that enable all MEPs to jet abroad.

He also ordered three of Mote's friends to stump up £50,000 between them, which they stand to lose if they do not ensure he turns up to be sentenced later this month.

Anthony Donne, mitigating, asked for Mote to be given two weeks to sort out parliamentary business in Brussels before he is sentenced on August 31. Mr Donne said: "He is a public figure who is not going to do a runner."

But Judge Price said he believed Mote might abscond, adding: "I have observed him over the past three weeks of this trial and he has showed deceit after deceit."

The politician (71), of Binsted in Hampshire, was cleared of four other charges relating to dishonestly claiming housing and council tax benefits as well as income support before he became an MEP.

But Judge Price has ordered Mote to start paying back all the money.

He said: "During the course of this trial I have watched almost with incredulity your deceit about money. Even now I cannot say with any certainty that I know what your real financial position is or what assets you have or have not got."

Mote originally won his seat by standing for the UK Independence Party but was expelled from the party once the allegations came to light.

He accepted in court he had not declared a £4,000 pension fund and a £5,000 stake in exchange betting funds.

Between February 20, 1996, and September 29, 2002, Mote claimed just short of £73,000, comprising £31,421 in income support, £35,404 in housing benefit and £5,950 council tax relief.

Mote, who started earning £60,000 a year when he became an MEP in 2004, denied 25 charges including false accounting, obtaining money transfer by deception, and failing to tell the Department for Work and Pensions about changes in his financial circumstances.

He failed to declare his wife had a £12,000-a-year job and that he had interests in two companies.

No money - yet Mote loved to live high life

Ashley Mote loved the lavish lifestyle, jetting abroad while claiming tens of thousands of pounds in benefits.

Despite being £10,000 overdrawn, the married father of two was spending way above his means, making credit-card transactions from Barbados, America and France and paying for private healthcare.

Mote always said he was forced to sign on after the Black Wednesday crash of 1990 ruined his successful company and left him with only the clothes he stood up in.

He said he had to sell the family home and was unable to get a job. He said he applied for housing benefit only after he was advised he could by a government office, and always denied deceiving the authorities.

Chichester District Council became suspicious and stopped paying him income support in 2002 and other investigators were soon on his tail.

Mote lived within the Chichester district at Langley near Liss on the Hampshire border when he made the claims.

Mote was able to use his position as MEP to claim European immunity from prosecution and drag things out for three years.