Charity Commission finds only scant evidence of charitable activity

A charity set up by former MP George Galloway to help people in Gaza may not have conducted any charitable activity or distributed any humanitarian aid, according to a highly critical report by the Charity Commission.

The charity regulator has published the findings of its inquiry into Viva Palestina, concluding that its trustees put publicly donated funds at risk as a result of their mismanagement and/or misconduct.

On its website the charity claimed to have raised £1m from the public but now it has emrged none of this appears to have gone on aid.

The regulator found that the trustees failed to fulfil their legal duties including to maintain proper financial records, safeguard the charity’s assets, provide financial accounts, and to address concerns raised by the regulator.

Whilst the inquiry saw some evidence that monies had been used to purchase medical supplies in line with the charity’s objects, the Commission concludes that the charity’s financial and other records were so poor that “it was difficult to establish with any certainty whether any charitable activity had taken place” and that the inquiry found “little or no evidence that humanitarian aid was distributed to those in need”.

The Commission did establish, however, that one of the charity’s former trustees had received payments from the charity and that mobile phones and radios were purchased with charity funds at “significant expenditure”. There are no records of where these assets are now held.

Michelle Russell, Director of Investigations, Monitoring and Enforcement at the Charity Commission said: “The public has a right to expect that those who serve as charity trustees take their responsibilities seriously, properly accounting for the charity’s income, assets, activities and its expenditure.

“This didn’t happen in the case of Viva Palestina. Our inquiry shows that the former trustees did not pay proper attention to the legal responsibilities involved in running a charity and handling funds donated by the public.

“We found little evidence that the intended beneficiaries received the support intended, despite the extensive fundraising by Viva Palestina. The former trustees thus badly let down the public to whom the charity is accountable.”

Galloway – sacked this week by TalkRadio after sending an allegedly antisemitic tweet – was also listed as a “subscriber” and had signed the charity’s constitution, which said it was formed “for the alleviation of suffering and to help the people of Gaza to rebuild their land”.

But investigators from the Charity Commission found that the charity’s trustees (who did not include Galloway) failed in the basic requirement to keep receipts and records of income and expenditure and never submitted any accounts.

Ron McKay, Galloway’s spokesman, who went on the convoys, insisted Viva Palestina was a campaign and not a charity.

“It’s taken the Charity Commission getting on for a decade to come up with this nonsense. A quick viewing of YouTube would have shot this down. Viva Palestina took hundreds of vans, cars, lorries, ambulances, you name it, to Gaza and they were not empty I can vouchsafe. If the participants’ pockets were also stuffed with money which they gave to Gazans, I don’t know. But I hope they did,” he said.

Among the issues highlighted in the Commission’s report included unauthorised payments with one former employee claiming that they had been instructed to make financial transactions by one of the founders and a former trustee of Viva Palestina, who had no authority to do so.

There was also a lack of proper control over employment: the same individual also claimed that they had been instructed by the same founder and former trustee to resign as a trustee and assume duties as a paid employee.

Viva Palestina began in 2009 as a large scale fundraising campaign to finance aid convoys to Gaza. Its founders did not originally apply to register the organisation as a charity; the Commission formed the view that it was a charity and must therefore be registered.

The regulator began its first inquiry in 2009, and a second inquiry in 2013 after trustees ignored the plan and failed in their statutory duty to submit annual returns and accounts for the financial years in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

On Thursday (6 June) it finally concluded its investigation.