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Charities linked to terrorism at ‘record high’ according to Telegraph

Charities linked to terrorism at ‘record high’ according to Telegraph

Categories: Latest News

Wednesday January 04 2017

The Sunday Telegraph front page article on 1 January claimed that the number of extremists abusing the charity sector are at an all-time high. It claimed the number of times the Charity Commission has raised concerns about links between charities and extremism with police and other agencies has nearly trebled in three years, from 234 to 630. The article further notes that the Commission had opened eight compliance cases and four formal inquiries into “allegations of abuse of charities for terrorist or extremist purposes” in 2015-16.

The article is based on an interview with the Chairman of the Charity Commission, William Shawcross, in which he said the problem was “not the most common problem we have, but it is the most potentially dangerous and deadly”.

Mr Shawcross called for Muslim charities to work with the regulator to tackle the threat of “takeover” by extremists. The Daily Telegraph reports Mr Shawcross saying that “it was in the interests of the Muslim community to crack down on the problem because of the risk they could be caught up in a terrorist incident like the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby outside Woolwich barracks in south-east London in 2013.”

It is not clear how the charity sector could be implicated in incidents similar to the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby given that the two men convicted of his murder, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, were not known to have links to British Muslim charities. The only instance of a mention of a charity in the report into the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby by the Intelligence and Security committee is in relation to a teaching institution in Wales, a registered charity, where Michael Adebowale was said to be a good student and the institution itself described by MI5 as “not an extremist place”.

Despite the Telegraph headline claiming “Charities linked to terrorism at record high” and referring to the Commission “sharing concerns” about allegations of links between charities and extremism with the police or other agencies, statistics from the Commission’s latest report entitled ‘Tackling abuse and mismanagement’ casts doubt on the purported scale of the threat.

In both the open and closed investigations into what the report calls “issues of concern,” incidents of alleged terrorism or extremism only numbered 4 and 2 respectively out of 53 and 48 investigations carried out by the Commission. In terms of ‘operational compliance cases,’ terrorist-related cases number 7, of which 6 were concluded in the period covered by the report. Across the board incidents of fraud, theft and misapplication of funds number far higher. 

Moreover, the Commission’s annual report for 2015/16 also notes that there were 2,217 “reports of serious incidents” (RSIs) reported to the Commission in 2015-16 (up from 2,129 in 2014/15) and of these, abuse of beneficiaries accounted for over half (1131 cases) followed by ‘subject to investigation by another body’ (56 cases) and ‘counter terrorism (allegations of terrorism)’ (21 cases).

The Commission report notes, in respect of its handling of the reports of serious incidents referred to it, “1928 were dealt with solely by our customer facing team, 36 referred to our investigations team, and 249 to our operations team.”

Given that the Commission report goes on to detail the number of open and closed investigations and the number of operational compliance cases which were terrorism related, it is safe to say that while reports of serious incidents are high, the number of charities warranting compliance or investigation measures for terrorism related abuses are extremely low.

This implies that despite the tone of the article in the Daily Telegraph, with its uncritical emphasis on Mr Shawcross’s belief that the threat posed by extremists to the charity sector is a “deadly” one, the broader context of challenges faced by the sector and the proportion of these which are terrorism related is largely absent.

As a Guardian article back in February 2016 illuminated, there is little scrutiny into the exact nature of any terrorist-related allegations, including how many of them truly fit into the category of “deadly” intent. 

The Telegraph article went on to mention how the Charity Commission had “stepped in” to stop the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and Anita Roddick Foundation funding Muslim civil liberties NGO, Cage, because the organisation did not match their “charitable objectives”. The Telegraph article places great emphasis upon this, but it is never specified in the article exactly why it is that Cage are thought to be “extremists”; the implication is that this is the case purely because Cage have been involved in encouraging British Muslims to resist the government’s Prevent agenda. Nor is there mention of the judicial review launched by Cage over the Commission’s intervention and the ruling which cleared the respective charities acknowledging both had “acted in good faith” when financially supporting Cage.

The aforementioned Guardian article in February 2016 explored whether Mr Shawcross’s rhetoric on this subject truly matches the reality. The article acknowledged that terrorist and extremist-related allegations now account for 22% of all disclosures between the Commission and other law-enforcement agencies, compared to 14% the previous year. However, it maintains there is little “hard” information on the exact nature of these allegations. The Commission also does not provide details on the disclosures to other agencies and there is next to no breakdown in the other categories. Many are self-reported and sometimes the alleged offence can be more a question of “misfortune than malpractice.” The Guardian states that only two of the 11 serious incident reports referred to the Commission in 2014/15, for instance, involved charities whose staff or goods had been seized by terrorist organisations.

Furthermore, as the Charity Commission itself acknowledges, the Guardian claims it is impossible to know whether the statistical rise highlighted by the report reflects a genuine increase in such cases, or simply a more rigorous approach to reporting anything out of the ordinary by people within the sector. Tom Keatinge, the director of Financial Crime and Security Studies at the Royal United Service Institute believes that it remains a relatively small threat in the area of global terrorism finance, stating that “the abuse of UK charities in support of terrorist efforts is negligible. The standards are very high and awareness among the big charities of this issue is intense.”

Whether or not the threat faced by charities from extremist groups is over-hyped has been an on-going debate within the sector for a number of years. In 2013, the Commission warned that “Charities providing humanitarian aid are themselves aware of the risk that their funds may be diverted and that their staff and local partners will be working in areas where militant groups and in some cases those who support terrorist activities operate.”

In 2014, the Sunday Times first reported Mr. Shawcross’s views about “Islamist extremism” being the “deadliest” threat to the sector. As we reported back then, the evidence was scant to support the contention that it was the sector’s “most deadly” problem. 

The Times also devoted its front page later in the year on 18 November 2014, to a report by Claystone about the number of Muslim charities placed under statutory investigation by the Commission amid comments by the Chief Executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO), about a potential negative bias in the Charity Commission’s view of Muslim charities but the coverage neglected to mention the salient criticism, that the Commission’s investigations have so often been shrouded in secrecy and a lack of transparency. The Times, as well as the Telegraph, are arguably promoting a distorted view of Muslim charities by reporting on the Commission chairman’s views without examining the facts or giving sufficient weight to counter-arguments.

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