A court has dismissed an appeal brought by a late evangelist charity founder against a Charity Commission decision to keep interim managers involved in running his organisation as part of a now decade-long investigation.
The First-Tier Tribunal decision by Judge McMahon, published on 28 April, found that the appeal had no reasonable prospects of success in the wake of Gilbert Deya’s death last year.
The case was brought in 2024 by Deya, the self-styled Archbishop of Peckham, whose charity Gilbert Deya Ministries had been subject to a statutory inquiry since 2016 over concerns about its governance and financial management. The charity's most recent filed accounts recorded an income of £28,000 and expenditure of £759,000 for 2024.
Deya was filmed in 2016 by undercover Sun reporters making claims – which he later denied – that special olive oil could cure HIV and cancer and that he could help infertile couples conceive. Deya was killed in a multi-vehicle road accident in his birth country on 17 June 2025, which also injured a number of other people.
The commission said in 2021 there had been several examples of misconduct and mismanagement by the charity’s trustees during the course of its inquiry, including financial transactions that ran counter to legal orders it made.
At the time, it appointed Geoff Carton-Kelly and Philip Reynolds of FRP Advisory Trading as interim managers to review and assess Gilbert Deya Ministries’ financial position and to make recommendations around whether it remained solvent and viable.
Appeal lodged after regulator persisted with intervention
Deya lodged an appeal in October 2024 after the commission “declined to discharge the appointment of interim managers to work alongside the trustees of the charity”, this week’s tribunal judgment said.
The appeal also sought to challenge the regulator’s decision at that point to conduct a review of Gilbert Deya Ministries’ financial governance and process, the judgment added.
The charity founder gave evidence to the tribunal just eight days before his death, with further witnesses due to be called on both his and the commission’s behalf.
After his death, Deya’s representatives asked that the case be “stayed” – or temporarily halted – for six months.
His representatives made subsequent requests that the case not be struck out, before a hearing on 26 March 2026 requested that they either “apply to substitute the late appellant with some other person” or withdraw the case.
On 6 April the court was informed that Deya’s team had made extensive efforts to obtain directions from his family members or other relevant parties such as the United Evangelical Church in Kenya or members of his former congregation. With these being unsuccessful, the appeal was struck out.
According to its charity register listing, the Gilbert Deya Ministries remains under regulatory alert. Civil Society has approached the commission for further comment as to its ongoing involvement with the charity.
