Trustees are legally responsible for ensuring that their charity's funds are properly used and that they manage the risk of financial abuse, including fraud and other financial crime. Sound financial controls and good management and oversight are key to ensuring this.
The Commission's core role is to protect the public's interest in charity. We aim to help charities better protect themselves by raising awareness of this risk and by providing guidance to charities to help them manage it. Where there is evidence that there has been mismanagement or misconduct in a charity and the risks justify it, we will intervene. We will prioritise the most serious cases of regulatory concern where the risk to the charity or sector is high, the abuse is deliberate and/or the trustees are unable or unwilling to put things right.
We explain our role and approach in dealing with the risk of financial abuse of charities in our Strategy for dealing with fraud, financial crime and financial abuse of the charity sector which is also in summary form.
We are also one of the partner organisations working to deliver the government’s UK strategy for tackling fraud – Fighting Fraud Together.
Links to Commission and our partners key guidance relevant to countering fraud and financial abuse