Three charities have been found in breach of counter-terrorism regulations by the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) after they failed to respond to requests for information.
OFSI, which is part of the Treasury, requested information from Sahara Hands, Peculiar Peoples’ Palace Ministries, and Impact Planet in relation to their compliance with counter-terrorism regulations.
However, the charities failed to engage with the regulatory body when required to do so, which led to their regulation breaches.
OFSI said it did not consider the breach to be of enough severity to justify a monetary penalty.
However, it judged it to be serious enough to publish a public warning, known as a “disclosure”, as a form of enforcement response.
Charities contacted three times prior to breach
In a report detailing the breach, published earlier this month, the regulatory body stated that it had contacted each charity three times by post and email, without receiving a response, prior to issuing the disclosure.
OFSI cited “aggravating factors” in its decision to publish the disclosure, namely the charities’ repeated failures to respond to its letters and their lack of engagement.
It additionally noted that “although OFSI recognises the possibility that a lack of engagement from the charities may be a result of them failing to update their contact information on the register, OFSI does not consider this to be a mitigating factor”.
OFSI acknowledged that while its disclosure was published in regard to “a small minority of charities who failed to respond”, it had encountered multiple other charities where contact information had not been updated or incoming correspondence was not being regularly monitored.
Civil Society has contacted the named charities and OFSI for comment.
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