The Charity Commission has opened a statutory inquiry into Hindu Community Society, over concerns about its management and governance.
The inquiry into the charity, which exists to advance Hinduism in Coventry comes due to concern about the organisation’s failure to file its annual accounts, despite its involvement in a class inquiry in 2017 related to these issues.
The regulator has said that it is also concerned that the trustees privately benefited from payments to the charity, and that they had been evicted from a £500,000 leased property.
While the inquiry was originally launched in 2017, the regulator was unable to announce or progress it due to a separate HMRC investigation into the charity. Now that that inquiry has closed the regulator is resuming its scrutiny of the charity.
The investigation will examine the extent to which the trustees are complying with their legal duties to file accounts and comply with previous regulatory guidance and whether or not they adequately manage conflicts of interest. It will also examine their spending decisions.
Hindu Community Society is governed by two trustees. It employs a further five volunteers. There is currently no information about its annual income available as it is late in filing its annual reports.
The charity did not respond to Civil Society Media’s request for comment.
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