In 2012 the regulator was alerted to a serious incident report relating to a fraud by one of the trustees, who also acted as the church treasurer and was one of its bishops. Gerald Edmund was subsequently found to have misappropriated some £190,000 and was given a two-year jail sentence.

In 2016, the Commission investigated the Bethel United Church of Jesus Christ Apostolic UK as part of a class inquiry which tackles charities that have failed to comply with their statutory obligations to submit their annual accounts for two or more financial years.

Although the charity, submitted its outstanding three years of accounting information at that point, it has again failed to comply with its legal obligations to file accounts and the accounts for the year ending March 2016 are now overdue.

The charity has been reporting income of between £1m and £1.6m for the past four years, while its recorded expenditure has been higher than income for each year.

The Charity Commission’s new statutory inquiry will examine the extent to which the trustees are complying with their legal duties in respect of their administration, governance and management of the charity and in particular their compliance with legal obligations for the preparation and filing of the charity’s accounts and other information or returns.

It will also consider the charity’s financial management including its financial controls and the extent to which the charity’s interests and property have been adequately protected, the extent to which the trustees have complied with previously issued regulatory guidance, and related party transactions.

After the inquiry has concluded, the Commission will publish a report detailing what issues it looked at, what actions were undertaken and what the outcomes were.

The Charity Commission’s compliance decision, Bethel United Church of Jesus Christ Apostolic UK: case report is here.