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The Charity Commission has launched a statutory inquiry into the Olive Grove Foundation, an organisation purposed to support people affected by poverty, wars, or natural disasters.
The regulator’s concerns have arisen in relation to the financial management and governance of the Bradford-based charity.
It follows previous formal regulator advice in 2019 from the body, which included the requirement for the Olive Grove Foundation to introduce “strong financial audit systems” to ensure the charity’s spending could be monitored.
A follow-up case on the compliance with these measures concluded that the commission was “not satisfied the trustees had acted on previous advice and that serious regulatory concern remained”.
In turn, the inquiry will examine the administration and governance of the charity, its financial controls which include the transfer of charitable funds to personal bank accounts, and its activities and overseas partnerships.
The commission will also aim to determine whether the trustees have “fulfilled their duties and responsibilities” under charity law and whether there has been “misconduct and/or mismanagement in the administration” of the foundation.
The regulator has also exercised legal powers to restrict the trustees’ transactions that can take place without the prior written consent of the commission.
