Trustees at failed Welsh minority charity Awema have been criticised by the Charity Commission for lacking oversight of the chief executive.
Awema, the All Wales Ethnic Minority Association, collapsed in 2012 after the Welsh government pulled funding. The Charity Commission opened a statutory inquiry, but the work of the inquiry was delayed at police request until after the chief executive, Naz Malik, had been tried for fraud. In September 2014 he was found not guilty on two counts of fraud. The jury could reach no verdict on a third count.
Malik was also accused of promoting his daughter rapidly to a senior position. Both the finance director Saquib Zia and a finance officer, Sylwia Bobrowska, were unfairly dismissed
An employment tribunal also found that Bobrowska had been subject to sexual harassment from Malik.
The Charity Commission investigation found that trustees had lacked oversight, had not met sufficiently often, had lacked training, and had not filed accounts properly. The charity had not had an adequate expenses policy, which allowed the chief executive to buy tickets to rugby matches and to pay for a gym membership with charity funds.
“The trustees failed to act in the charity’s best interests and had little or no oversight of the charity’s management,” the Commission inquiry report said. “Trustee meetings were held at irregular and infrequent intervals, and there were inadequate reporting arrangements. This ultimately resulted in insufficient oversight of the management of the charity, and issues with the use of charity’s funds were not identified nor prevented.
