The Charity Commission has opened a statutory inquiry into Mesifta Talmudical College, a London-based charity which promotes Jewish religious education and learning, over concerns about its failure to file annual accounts on time
Until recently, the charity was part of the regulator’s class inquiry into charities that have defaulted on two or more occasions on their obligations to submit annual accounting information. At the time, Mesifta Talmudical College had been late filing accounts for five consecutive years, but submitted the outstanding accounting documents at the end of 2015. These showed an income of between £920,276 and £846,911 annually over the period.
However, despite the regulator’s enforcement action to ensure the trustees were compliant, the charity failed again to submit its annual accounts, report and returns for the latest financial year which were due by 31 July 2016.
Following the repeated default, the inquiry will examine the failure of the trustees to meet this deadline; the financial management of the charity to determine whether the trustees have failed to properly manage the charity’s funds and therefore, have put the charity’s funds at risk; and the reasons why the trustees have persistently failed to comply with the deadlines for filing the charity’s annual accounts, reports and annual returns by the due date over five consecutive financial years from 2011 to 2015.
The commission will publish a report on its findings in due course.
