The Charity Commission has frozen the bank accounts of George Galloway’s charity Viva Palestina, and has replaced trustees with an interim manager, the regulator announced today.
Viva Palestina, also known as Lifeline for Gaza, was set up in January 2009 to run aid convoys to Gaza, and claimed to have raised well over £1m. It has since run several aid convoys, one of which, in 2010, resulted in Galloway being deported from Egypt.
The Commission opened an inquiry into the charity in June 2013. The inquiry, which is still ongoing, is looking into “serious concerns relating to financial management, including a failure by the current and/or former trustees to account for charity funds since the inception of the charity”.
Helen Blundell of MHA Bloomer Heaven has been appointed as interim manager of the charity “to the exclusion of the Charity’s trustees as a temporary and protective measure”, the Commission said. She took over management of the charity on Monday 15 September.
A Commission spokeswoman said: “As the regulator’s concerns about the financial management of the charity have not been resolved, and its annual accounts and returns are still outstanding, the Commission has acted to appoint an interim manager to take over the management and administration of the charity, including specifically to compile and submit overdue accounts, reports and returns, and report to the Commission any additional regulatory issues identified.”
Viva Palestina was registered as a charity in April 2009, but has never filed accounts. Its first set of accounts are more than three years overdue. The Commission said it had used its powers to compel current and former trustees to file accounts, but the people they had named did not comply. Instead, two separate appeals were lodged with the Charity Tribunal, which were later withdrawn, the second of them last week.
The Commission previously launched an inquiry into the charity in March 2009, two months after it was set up, even though Galloway had not applied to register the organisation as a charity. The Commission said it had “charitable purposes” and fell within its jurisdiction.
That inquiry, which concluded in 2010, found the charity had been mismanaged and had misled the public.
Civil Society News approached Galloway for comment, but received no response. Civil Society News also attempted to contact the two people named on the Commission website as trustees: Ian Drummond and Arif Bajwa, but was unable to contact them.
