THE Charity Commission has restricted spending by Barnabas Aid (also known as the Barnabas Fund) while it conducts a statutory inquiry into the charity’s operations, it announced on Thursday.
The inquiry was opened on 17 September. The announcement last week said that the Commission was looking into “serious concerns regarding its compliance with charity law and the use of charitable funds”, including “allegations of unauthorised payments to some of the current and former trustees and related parties, allegations that the charity’s founders have inappropriate control or influence over how the charity operates, and possible unmanaged conflicts of interest”.
The inquiry will also seek to establish if the charity’s structure and relationship with Nexcus, a US-based subsidiary, are in the best interests of the charity.
The Commission has used its powers to restrict temporarily any transactions that the charity intends to make which are more than £4000, noting that it has “significant income and assets”. Its latest accounts report an income of more than £21 million, and assets of more than £2.3 million.
The opening of an inquiry was “not a finding of wrongdoing”, the announcement said.
A statement from Barnabas Aid published online without a named author welcomed the investigation, and said that the spending restrictions would “further reinforce confidence that donated funds will be used to help suffering and persecuted Christians”.
It said that, earlier this year, Barnabas Aid had appointed an independent firm to conduct an impartial investigation into “allegations made by multiple whistle-blowers against the Barnabas founder, Patrick Sookhdeo, and other senior leaders within the organisation”. In April, each of these individuals had been suspended pending the investigation, and, in August, the law firm had produced an interim report, which had been sent to the Charity Commission.
This had found “serious and repeated contraventions of internal policies; that some senior figures were responsible for creating a toxic work environment which resulted in staff feeling entirely unable to routinely voice concerns; evidence of serious financial impropriety”, the statement said.
The four chairs of Barnabas Aid in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and the UK had written to Dr Sookhdeo (international director) and his wife (international director emeritus); Caroline Kerslake (international director of projects); and Prasad Phillips (deputy international director), “requiring them all to resign from Barnabas Aid”. The former CEO Noel Frost had already been dismissed from his position in June, the statement said.
The statement said that the independent investigation had uncovered “evidence of theft and misuse of funds”. Investigations by accountants were ongoing, and steps had been taken to “significantly strengthen our oversight and financial controls”. The charity was “confident that we will recover any misused funds”.
The international CEO of Barnabas Aid is currently Colin Bloom, a former director of the Conservative Christian Fellowship, who served as an independent faith engagement adviser to the last government. In August, a letter to supporters from the chair of Barnabas Aid in the UK, Philip Richards, said that Mr Bloom had not been appointed by the charity’s board, and that the investigation by the law firm had not been approved by it (News, 23 August).
Mr Richards reported that Mr Bloom was “supported” by Lord Reading, a current trustee and Mr Richards’s predecessor as chair, and that allegations of bullying had been “orchestrated by Noel Frost”. In 2021, Lord Reading was filmed alongside Prince Michael of Kent in a joint investigation by The Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches programme, examining allegations that members of the Royal Family were trading on their status for personal profit. Last month, The Daily Telegraph reported that Lord Reading had been accused of using money from Barnabas Aid to fight these claims, and also for rent and other personal expenses. Lord Reading is said to have cooperated with the inquiry.
The Telegraph further reported that Mr Frost had been accused of using charity credit cards on personal expenses, including flights to Las Vegas.
Barnabas Aid was founded by Dr Sookhdeo and his wife, Rosemary, in 1993. In 2015, he was found guilty of sexual assault and intimidating two witnesses, and sentenced to a three-month community order (News, 27 February 2015). He continued to maintain his innocence, and remained international director of Barnabas Aid International (News, 8 May 2015).
In November 2020, Dr Sookhdeo established Nexcus International as an umbrella organisation for the four national offices of the charity. Until April this year, he served as its chair.
