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Awema FD 'was not a scapegoat', chair tells employment tribunal

Finance | Niki May Young | 17 Aug 2012

The former chair of the All Wales Ethnic Minority Association (Awema) has told an employment tribunal that the finance director was not made a scapegoat after the scandal that led to the equality charity’s closure earlier this year.

Saquid Zia, the charity’s former finance director is claiming unfair dismissal after he was dismissed together with chief executive Naz Malik on 17 February.

According to a BBC report from the employment tribunal yesterday, chair Rita Austin said: "There was no feature that we were scapegoating anybody.

"They were held responsible for those decisions for which they were responsible."

The decision was taken, she said, on the basis of the Welsh government’s audit report findings into the charity's governance and finance, published on its website on 21 February 2012.

Zia had been the one to initially raise concerns about the governance of the charity with the Welsh government on 19 December 2011. Three days earlier Austin had been elected as chair at an EGM. One of her first actions was to convene a disciplinary panel of herself and two other trustees to consider numerous allegations against the chief executive, issuing Malik with one written warning and two oral warnings. The panel convened the same day Zia put forward his allegations to the government.

Subsequently Austin herself put forward further allegations. All allegations informed the Welsh government’s audit report into the charity which had seen seven trustees resign in July 2011. The audit concluded that there was "significant and fundamental failure in the control and governance framework of Awema" and that "failings permeated the whole of the organisation". The report resulted in the withdrawal of all public funding by the government and the Big Lottery Fund to the charity, and it’s subsequent closure.  

Zia was suspended by Austin on 12 January, "due to concerns regarding his alleged conduct and performance in the preceding weeks," according to the audit report, before he was dismissed the next month.

The BBC reports that Mr Zia denied during the tribunal that the charity was insolvent when he left it, a claim that cannot be supported due to the absence of audited reports that also hampered the Welsh government’s audit report.

The tribunal has been adjourned until Monday.

The Charity Commission and the Wales Audit Office are currently carrying out separate investigations into the charity, which employed 8 people and was supported by 20 volunteers.