The Charity Commission has announced that it banned a bishop from being a trustee for 15 years and ordered his charity to close after reports that he sold a fake Covid-19 cure.
Its inquiry into the Kingdom Church GB published today found that trustee Bishop Climate Wiseman had advertised the product on behalf of his private business interests from the charity’s premises and using a website linked to the charity.
The Kingdom Church GB sold “plague protection kits” on its website, which consisted of a small bottle of oil and a piece of red yarn, for £91, according to media reports.
In December 2022, Wiseman was convicted of fraud at Inner London Crown Court and sentenced to a year in prison. This was suspended for two years and he was ordered to perform 130 hours of unpaid work and pay £60,072 in costs.
The Commission disqualified Wiseman from being a charity trustee or holding a senior position in a charity for 15 years and directed the charity to close last February.
It disqualified five other trustees for varying amounts of time ranging from five to 10 years.
‘Serious misconduct and mismanagement’
The Kingdom Church was registered as a charity in 2010 and had charitable objects of advancing the Christian religion.
The regulator opened a regulatory compliance case into the charity in April 2020 following media reports of the Covid-19 protection kits it appeared to be selling, and it opened a statutory inquiry in August 2020 to investigate further concerns.
In February 2021, the Commission appointed an interim manager to the charity to conduct a review of the charity’s governance, administration and finances while the trustees remained responsible for the day-to-day management of the charity.
On review of the findings, the interim manager decided the charity should be wound up.
The Charity Commission’s inquiry found there had been serious misconduct, mismanagement and poor financial controls at Kingdom Church.
The inquiry found that trustees had never held trustee meetings and that Wiseman made all decisions about the charity and its operations.
The trustees could not provide any meeting minutes, decision-making records or management accounts for the charity. There was also little evidence of public benefit at the charity, according to the inquiry.
‘Conflicts of interest’
At the time the inquiry was launched, the charity reported having Wiseman and his wife Jennifer Irungu among its trustees, thus raising concerns about conflicts of interest.
The regulator’s inquiry also found that the financial accounts the charity had submitted for 2018, 2019 and 2020 were not accurate and ordered them to resubmit corrected ones which it failed to do.
Accounts submitted for the charity between 2015 and 2017 identified two subsidiary companies registered in Scotland, of which Wiseman and Irungu were directors.
Another trustee, Reverend Edward Nsubuga, was the secretary of these companies. The inquiry found these were private businesses that were not, in fact, subsidiaries of the charity as previously claimed.
During the inquiry, the trustees said the charity had not had a bank account since June 2018 and that the bank accounts of these two private companies were used for all transactions relating to the charity instead.
The Commission’s inquiry concluded that there had been serious misconduct and or mismanagement in the administration of the charity by the trustees as it failed to manage conflicts of interest, and had poor financial controls and management.
Failing to keep adequate accounting records meant trustees were in breach of their legal obligations.
The charity’s reputation was also put at risk due to Bishop Wiseman’s actions, which brought it into disrepute after he used the charity’s website to sell an oil to protect against Covid-19, despite there being no scientific basis for these claims.
Irungu was disqualified from being a trustee or holding a senior role in a charity for 10 years and Nsubuga was disqualified for eight years.
Trustee Pauline Waweru was disqualified for six years, while Joyce Riches King and Jennifer Divine Change were disqualified for five years.
Charity Commission: ‘Scammed vulnerable people’
Helen Earner, director of regulatory services at the Charity Commission, said: “The public rightly expects charities to be places of safety.
“Trustee Bishop Climate Wiseman fell woefully short of that expectation when he scammed vulnerable people at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The Charity Commission acted robustly to investigate the charity and its governance, and ultimately concluded that the Kingdom Church GB should be wound up and removed from the charity register.”
