Charities Violated Law by Not Responding to Sanctions Agency, UK Says
Three U.K.-registered charity organizations violated the country’s financial sanctions regulations when they failed to respond to letters from the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, the agency said this month.
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OFSI said it tried to contact the organizations -- Sahara Hands, Peculiar Peoples’ Palace Ministries and Impact Planet -- multiple times by email and paper post, but they never responded. The charities were in “breach” of the U.K.’s counterterrorism sanctions regulations “by failing to provide the information required without reasonable excuse,” the agency said. OFSI said the breach didn’t justify a fine, instead saying a public disclosure was the more “appropriate and proportionate enforcement response.”
The U.K. said charity trustees “have a duty” to comply with the country’s laws, including by responding to requests for information by OFSI. “It is noted that all other charities contacted by OFSI complied with the regulations by providing the requested information,” the agency said. "They also demonstrated robust awareness of sanctions compliance duties including record keeping.”
OFSI said the charities may not have responded because their contact information wasn’t up to date in the U.K. Charity Commission public register of charities. But the agency didn’t consider this to be a “mitigating factor” because it said charities are responsible for making sure they can be contacted through the information they give to the Charity Commission.
“During the course of its work OFSI has identified multiple charities where contact information was not updated or incoming correspondence was not regularly monitored, which delayed their response to the” request for information, the agency said. “Further to that, OFSI notes it would assist charities in discharging their responsibility to respond to [requests for information] if they ensured their contact information on the register was up to date and incoming correspondence was regularly monitored.”