The Charity Commission is investigating a Christian international development charity over concerns that it made “unexplained payments” to several people and companies.
This week, the regulator announced a statutory inquiry into Total Healing World Outreach due to concerns that there might have been misconduct or mismanagement in the charity’s administration.
Total Healing World Outreach was created to advance the Christian faith in the UK and overseas and prevent and relieve poverty.
The commission first engaged with the charity in June 2023 after trustees had failed to file accounts and financial information on time every year from the charity’s registration in 2011 to the year ending July 2022.
After conducting financial analysis, the commission uncovered “unexplained payments made to several individuals and companies”.
Its full inquiry, which opened on 15 January 2025, will now look at the charity’s finances in more detail, including “whether the loans taken out by the trustees were in the charity’s best interests”.
Scope of inquiry
The commission will aim to determine whether the charity’s trustees are complying with their legal duties with regard to its administration, governance and management.
It will examine the extent of any related party transactions, unauthorised trustee personal benefit and the trustees’ compliance with their legal obligations to file the charity’s accounts and annual returns on time and to an appropriate standard.
The inquiry will also look at whether the trustees are adequately managing the charity and the extent to which any failings or weaknesses identified in the charity’s administration are a result of misconduct or mismanagement by the trustees.
Total Healing World Outreach’s latest accounts show that it recorded a total income of £227,000 last year, of which £157,000 was spent “to promote the Christian faith and charitable community activities”.
Civil Society has contacted the charity for comment.
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