Charity Commission Finds Trustees of Barnet, United Kingdom, Religious Charity Left Funds at Risk

The Charity Commission has concluded that the trustees of the charity, which operated in Barnet and was set up to advance the Christian faith, stepped away from the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) New Life Assembly (House of Prayer for All Nations) and left it without a governing body. The Commission found that this created circumstances in which charitable funds could be misapplied. The charity has now been removed from the Commission’s register of charities.

The Commission first engaged with the charity after it failed to file its accounts, and in 2014 it was added to the Commission’s “double defaulter” inquiry, which examines charities in default. The overdue accounts were eventually filed, but the charity went into default again over its 2013 accounts, and the Commission opened a further inquiry.

That inquiry found there were no trustees running the charity. Instead, the charity’s administrator provided information to the inquiry. It also found that £50,000 had been paid to a pastor of the charity. The payment had been arranged by the administrator, who was not registered as a trustee. Inadequate financial controls had also failed to ensure that the funds paid to the pastor were spent on the charity’s purposes. The pastor could show only that £35,000 had been spent on the charity’s objects. Since then, a repayment agreement has been drawn up between the pastor and the administrator to cover the amount owed in full.

The Commission said the public rightly expects trustees to steward funds carefully in the best interests of their charity and its beneficiaries, and that charities can and should lead in taking those expectations seriously. Its inquiry concluded that the charity had existed without adequate leadership or financial controls, leaving its funds at risk of misuse. Money intended for charitable purposes was spent outside those purposes, and the Commission welcomed the agreed repayment schedule for the money not spent on charitable purposes. Honest weights in financial dealings matter here, as the Commission’s findings on unaccounted funds show (Proverbs 11:1).

The charity was removed from the register on 1 October 2019 because it was no longer operating.

Source: Read the original report