The businessmen behind an all-male charity dinner at which guests were accused of harassing young women working as hostesses have been rebuked for failing in their duties as trustees.
An investigation by the Charity Commission concluded that trustees of the Presidents Club did not meet the minimum standards expected of them when staging a charity event.
Their annual black tie dinner, attended by hundreds of leading men from the property and entertainment sectors, business, politics and sport, generated huge controversy in January when an undercover journalist from the Financial Times reported that many hostesses were groped and sexually harassed at an after party.
The FT said that the Charity Commission found serious failings by the three trustees — businessmen David Meller, Bruce Ritchie and Harvey Soning.
The probe targeted three areas: whether the trustees complied with their legal duty to act with reasonable care and skill; whether they managed charity resources responsibly or exposed it to undue reputational risk; and whether they acted in the charity’s best interests.
A statement from the Trustees Of The Presidents Club Charitable Trust said:
“At a very early stage the Charity Commission, entirely properly, made a public appeal encouraging anyone who would like to share relevant information about the PCCT and the charity’s fundraising event on 18 January to come forward. If appropriate they were urged to contact the police. Simultaneously, the PCCT made an identical public appeal.
“Despite the widespread publicity given to these appeals across the entire media spectrum, the trustees understand that the Charity Commission did not receive any responses to their call for evidence and no complaints of any harassment have been received by the PCCT from either guests or members of event staff at the dinner. PCCT has not seen any evidence, beyond the allegations made by the FT, to suggest any wrongdoing. Nor has a single complaint been made to the police.
“We, as Trustees of the Presidents Club Charitable Trust have read and carefully noted the findings of the Charity Commission’s case report on the regulatory compliance case opened immediately following publication by the Financial Times of what purported to be a description of behaviour of some individuals at the 2018 PCCT dinner.
“The trustees recognise the findings set out in Charity Commission’s report and intend to comply fully with the regulatory action plan contained in the report.
“Given the media frenzy this report unleashed, and the climate to which it added, we welcomed the Charity Commission involvement and co-operated immediately, fully and transparently with the Commission.
“The PCCT, its trustees and its aims have always previously been viewed as above reproach. Our sole aim was only ever to raise money for charity. We believe it is regrettable that this was not acknowledged in the Charity Commission report. We, as trustees, have never and would never condone the sort of alleged behaviour described in the FT article.
“Regrettably, given the perceptions created by the FT’s report and the prevailing climate which it and other articles have created, we felt we had little realistic option but to wind up the Charity. This means that a lifeline of millions of pounds of charitable help to disadvantaged and under-privileged children and to children’s charities has been permanently severed.
“We understand both the role played in our democracy by a free media and the commercial needs of the press. However, there may be a time to question whether the current media climate around certain aspects of charity fund raising and work operate far more to the detriment of charitable beneficiaries than in the interest of exposing any wrongdoing.”
Click here for the full Times article (£)
Click here for the full Telegraph article
Click here for the full Independent article
