Naomi House to investigate Christie's Icelandic refund 1

Finance | Vibeka Mair | 5 Aug 2009

Naomi House, a charity fighting to recoup losses following the Icelandic banking collapse, has put in a Freedom of Information request to know what conversations Downing Street had with the Christie, whose losses of £6.5m in Iceland were compensated by the NHS North West.

Khalid Aziz, chairman of Naomi House, said the charity was keen to know what sort of mechanisms Downing Street had with the Christie.

Save our Savings (SOS), a coalition of charities that lost money in Iceland, led by Naomi House and Cats Protection, slammed the Christie's refund as unfair at the time and called on the government to give all charities equal treatment.

Naomi House is also likely to follow the Christie’s lead and launch a judicial review of the government’s decision not to compensate for its £5.5m loss.

The Christie intended to take its case for compensation to the High Court, but cancelled its bid after a funding injection from NHS North West.

Aziz (pictured) told Charity News Alert that Naomi House was actively talking to lawyers about putting a judicial review into process.

“The chances are it is going to happen,” he said. “We are not going to throw good money after bad, but if we can’t get our money back through any other route we will launch a judicial review.”

Aziz added the charity was still very active in the group Save our Savings (SOS), but said Naomi House would initially launch its bid separately and would proceed together if the group decided this was the best action.

Dominic Sullivan, director of legal services at Cats Protection, said:

“We will no doubt be speaking to Naomi House and the rest of SOS about Naomi House’s planned action against the government over the next few days – each charity has to do what it thinks best to recover its funds and each charity has to make its own decisions about individual and collective action.

“SOS has taken and continues to seek legal advice on various legal routes including the possibility of judicial review of decisions of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) not to compensate charities. Some applications are still being processed - if or when these are rejected we will decide how best to proceed with this route individually and as a group.”

Who's Who: Vibeka Mair

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Carl Allen
5 Aug 2009

I would wish these charities every success in any judicial review.

Nonetheless there remains the unanswered question of why these charities were into such high risk investment.

Many in the legal, accounting and auditing profession in all sectors will look forward to reading the reporting treatment accorded to the prospect of judicial review compensation, as the filing of accounts deadline draws nearer.

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