Nowzad’s Operation Ark cost the charity £1.4m, 40% of its overall income for the year, according to newly filed accounts.
The charity’s financial accounts for the year ending 30 September 2022 show its income rose by 320% in a year, from £838,000 in 2021 to £3.52m in 2022.
Operation Ark began in August 2021 when the Taliban entered Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul and took control of the country.
The charity was accused of prioritising pets over people in the evacuation, and the Charity Commission investigated the negative media reports via a regulatory compliance case in 2021.
Nowzad was cleared of any wrongdoing last July, and the Commission found Operation Ark did fall within the charity’s purposes and that the objectives of the operation were made clear to donors during fundraising.
According to Nowzad’s accounts, it rescued 67 Afghan nationals and 162 cats and dogs via a chartered plane.
“We offered our empty seats to the British evacuation mission – they were refused”, Nowzad's CEO Pen Farthing writes in the accounts.
£90,000 in project costs could not be signed off
Over 6% of the project expenses on Operation Ark could not be signed off by the charity's independent auditors due to a lack of “sufficient audit evidence”. The payments for these expenses were made under the Hawala system, which allows money to be transmitted without any currency actually moving.
The independent auditor said that £90,000 of the funds from the project had “limited” audit evidence due to the transactions taking place under the informal banking system.
Nowzad admits that Hawala payments were used for Operation Ark due to the lack of banking systems in the country.
The accounts state: “Due to the charity's Operation Ark project, the charity spent a significant amount of time in the period operating out of Afghanistan. Due to the lack of banking systems in the country, the charity had to make use of Hawala payments in the period.”
All payments made under the broker system were under the “full knowledge” and approval of trustees, the accounts read.
Farthing told Civil Society: “During Operation Ark, I was in Kabul and fully in charge of implementing the expenditure. I did not even consider collecting sufficient appropriate audit evidence that would be needed two years later – firstly this level of evidence was impossible to obtain from suppliers given the country was descending into chaos and secondly, with the Taliban literally at our door, I was forced to make these split-second decisions to evacuate our staff and animals.
“The trustees and I made these decisions in the hope that our supporters would understand the stress and strain we were under and would trust the charity to do the right thing. I am grateful that a 10-month-long Charity Commission investigation that included an assessment of the Hawala system returned a verdict of ‘no wrongdoing whatsoever’ in relation to all our activities during Operation Ark.”
The CEO said the £90,000 in Hawala payments were incurred during the two weeks it took for the charity to evacuate Kabul.
He said the payments covered transport for staff and relevant security, two trucks used to evacuate the dogs and cats to the airport, on-location staff costs such as salaries, food and building rental costs and cash payments for staff that were not evacuated.
Pen Farthing: ‘At times, [the negativity] became just too much to take’
Nowzad was subject to a regulatory compliance case in August 2021 due to criticism of its evacuation mission by the press, public figures, and politicians.
The Charity Commission published its findings last July and found no wrongdoing at the charity.
Farthing writes in the accounts that the criticism became “too much to take” at times.
“The mainstream press and many prominent figures on social media have continued to falsely accuse our charity and particularly me, of 'pets over people' whilst pushing an unprecedented level of negativity toward our charity.
“To be honest, at times, it became just too much to take. Not one newspaper article has ever reported on our staff and their new lives. I almost gave up,” he writes.
The Foreign Affairs Select Committee investigation into the Afghan withdrawal showed that Nowzad did not use any government resources or take the place of any other evacuees, the accounts stated.
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