The Charity Commission has opened a statutory inquiry into a health charity and restricted its use of banking and online fundraising platforms because of serious concerns about financial irregularities.
J.E.L.A Foundation is a London-based charity that was set up to help people in Haiti and those of Haitian descent living in the UK.
The Commission said it has scrutinised the charity’s accounts and identified a “discrepancy in excess of £200,000 between what was declared in the charity’s annual returns for the last five years, and the bank transactions carried out during the same period”.
It has also identified repeated payments from the charity to one of its trustees and a pattern of donation payments totalling £700,000 from individuals to the charity that include two trustees and a potentially connected third party.
The regulator is concerned that this could amount to “misapplication of charity funds and possible personal benefit”.
The Commission has issued an order restricting the charity’s access to its bank account and banned three online fundraising platforms from releasing money to the charity without the Commission’s permission.
The charity is also operating without enough trustees to be compliant with its governing document. Four individuals are listed in the accounts, whilst the charity’s governing document requires a minimum of five trustees.
J.E.L.A Foundation’s accounts for the year ending February 2018 state that it received £165,214 from fundraising on JustGiving, which was its sole income source.
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