The former chief executive of the Captain Tom Foundation has said he was ‘gobsmacked’ by what he discovered at the charity.
Jack Gilbert has told of what he believed the be questionable practices within the foundation and said Captain Tom’s daughter was motivated by a ‘level of self-interest’.
It comes as the Charity Commission concluded that Hannah and Colin Ingram-Moore benefited ‘significantly’ through their association with the high-profile charity and were guilty of ‘repeated misconduct’.
This included pocketing an advance from the lockdown hero’s £1.5million book deal and giving none to charity.
Captain Tom rose to fame during the pandemic, raising millions for NHS charities by walking laps of his garden in lockdown before he died in February 2021 aged 100.
After his death, the charity watchdog opened an inquiry into the Captain Tom Foundation.
Mr Gilbert took over as chief executive from Mrs Ingram-Moore and ran the charity for five months until the watchdog investigation into the charity caused it to become inactive.
Speaking in his first interview, he told the BBC: ‘When I came in, I must admit, I was gobsmacked. I was shocked at the number of systems that just did not accord with best practice.
‘One of my first exercises was, of course, to get trusted charity status for the foundation, which meant going through a whole range of different hurdles.
‘And the fact was that although we had done many of them, there were lots of key practices that simply were not in place.’
He revealed that while setting up management accounts, which were not completed before he arrived at the charity, he noticed an invoice to Virgin Media that has been cancelled.
The Charity Commission found Mrs Ingram-Moore’s claim was paid £18,000 for her appearance at an Virgin Media O2 Captain Tom Foundation Connector Awards.
She claimed the appearance was made ‘in a personal capacity’ but the watchdog disagreed and the report stated the money should have gone to the foundation.
Mr Gilbert said that this was ‘very unusual’ and added it was ‘deeply unethical’ for a charity chief executive to personally benefit at the expense of charity activities.
After becoming suspicious, he said he reported the payment to the board and other indiscretions he found in the accounts to the chair and subsequently the board.
He added that the foundations was a ‘lost oppurtunity’ as the idea behind the charity was to ‘address ageism’ and ‘create connections between older people who are isolated in the wider community’.
Among those criticising them today was former Met detective Mick Neville, who said their behaviour ‘strikes me as greedy and wicked’.
Meanwhile, former Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker told : ‘Captain Tom won the hearts of the nation with his selfless activity at his age, and generated much admiration.
‘For his family to now be accused of misappropriating funds is not only tacky in the extreme but a betrayal of everything Captain Tom stood for.’
David Holdsworth, Chief Executive of the Charity Commission, said the public ‘will be rightly feeling misled’ and criticised the Ingram-Moores for ‘consistent blurring of the lines between the private benefits of the family and the interest of the charity’.
‘I think everyone got behind Captain Tom and I think we all remember during the pandemic the smile he brought to all our faces – it reminded us of what service to others can actually achieve,’ he told BBC Breakfast.
Hannah Ingram-Moore making ‘disingenuous’ public statements suggesting she had not been offered a six-figure sum to become the Captain Tom Foundation’s chief executive, when she had actually requested a £150,000 remuneration package to take on the role. This sum was rejected by the Charity Commission and she ended up receiving the equivalent of £85,000 per annum for a maximum of nine months on a three-month rolling contract.
The Ingram-Moores issuing misleading suggestions that donations from book sales would be paid to the foundation. An advance of almost £1.5 million for a three-book deal was paid to Club Nook, a company where the Ingram-Moores are directors, but none went to the charity. Requests to hand the funds over to the foundation were ‘declined’. Captain Tom wrote in the prologue of his autobiography that it had ‘given [me] the chance to raise even more money for the charitable foundation.’
A claim by Mrs Ingram-Moore that an appearance at the Virgin Media Local Legends Award ceremony, for which she was paid £18,000, was undertaken in a personal capacity. The Commission said there was no evidence to support this and the money should have gone to the foundation, which received a separate £2,000 fee.
Confusion over handling of intellectual property rights, which the Commission said were owned by the family but offered to the foundation to use without appropriate agreements in place, leading to possible financial losses to the charity. A £100 limited edition bottle of Captain Tom gin was sold without a ‘written agreement in place’ over the ‘exact amount of money that will be donated’.
Using the foundation’s name in a planning application for a luxury spa facility in the grounds of the family’s £2.25 million home in Bedfordshire. The Ingram-Moores claimed this was an error that occurred while both were ‘busy undertaking global media work’. The building – which was larger than agreed by Central Bedfordshire Council – was torn down earlier this year after the couple lost an appeal against the local authority’s order to demolish it.
The Commission confirmed it had not referred the contents of its report to the police or Crown Prosecution Service ‘as we have not found evidence of criminal activity’.
Bedfordshire Police today confirmed to that they were not investigating the issue.
But Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, who sat on the House of Lords Select Committee on Charities to scrutinise the Commission’s activities, told the Mail: ‘It’s entirely right that there should be an investigation because it appears that money that was given in good faith may have been misappropriated.
Mrs Ingram-Moore made ‘disingenuous’ statements about the six-figure sum she initially demanded to become chief executive of the Captain Tom Foundation (CTF).
There was also a misleading suggestion that proceeds from a £1.5million book deal would be made to the foundation, including from Captain Tom’s autobiography Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day.
The report revealed the grasping couple had twice been invited to ‘rectify matters [over the book deals] by making a donation to the charity in line with their original intentions as understood by those involved’ but had ‘declined to do so’.
Mrs Ingram-Moore’s claim that she was paid £18,000 for her appearance at an awards ceremony ‘in a personal capacity’ was also criticised, with the report stating the money should have gone to the foundation.
Confusion over intellectual property rights for branded goods, such as bottles of gin, led to possible financial losses for the charity.
The couple were also censured for citing the foundation’s name in a planning application for a spa pool block at their home in Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire, that has since had to be demolished.
The hard-hitting 30-page report concluded Mr and Mrs Ingram-Moore’s failings ‘amount to misconduct and/or mismanagement’.
The Commission had already banned Mrs Ingram-Moore, 54, from being a trustee or holding senior management roles in any charity in England and Wales for ten years, while her 67-year-old husband was struck off for eight years.
The CTF was incorporated in May 2020 to raise funds for ‘the values held dear to [Mrs Ingram-Moore’s] father’, including loneliness and mental health.
Donations and other funds received were separate from the £38.9 million raised by Captain Tom’s circuits of the family garden leading up to his 100th birthday and which benefited NHS Charities Together.
Today, neighbours of the Ingram-Moore’s shared their upset about what had taken place.
Small business owner Sam Barnes said, referencing Captain Tom’s charity fundraising during the Covid-19 pandemic, that ‘it was nice when it happened’.
‘When it was all going on it was nice for the village,’ said the 34-year-old, who lives near to the Ingram-Moores in Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire.
‘Then we soon realised they were cheating the system somewhere, got greedy early.’
But he said he ‘couldn’t really care less any more’, adding: ‘They’re not going to go to jail or have to repay it.’
Retired security officer Dave Miller, 75, said ‘it’s just a shame’.
‘Maybe if she gave half of it to charity or something nobody would be hounding her,’ he said.
The Ingram-Moores became trustees of the foundation in February 2021 – a day after the death of Captain Tom, who was knighted by the late Queen.
Mrs Ingram-Moore resigned from her post weeks later, just before the process to appoint her as CEO began. Her husband remained a trustee until they were disqualified by the Commission in July this year.
The watchdog opened its investigation in March 2021 and escalated it to a statutory inquiry in June 2022 over concerns about the charity’s management and independence from Captain Tom’s family.
The couple described the inquiry and their bans as trustees as a ‘harrowing and debilitating ordeal’.
But a series of PR disasters, including a car crash TV interview with Piers Morgan where Mrs Ingram-Moore denied being offered a six-figure salary to become the foundation’s CEO but admitted receiving £800,000 in proceeds from the three books her father wrote, tarnished their reputation and that of the foundation.
During a planning inquiry into the family’s bid for the luxury spa in the garden of their grade II listed seven-bedroom home, their barrister announced the foundation was to close. The commission cannot order the closure of a foundation.
The couple were subsequently ordered to tear down the spa block and the house was put on the market for £2.25million in April.
Charity Commission chief executive David Holdsworth said the report had uncovered ‘repeated failures of governance and integrity’ and the foundation had ‘not lived up to that legacy of others before self, which is central to charity’.
Only 140 of around 900,000 trustees had been disqualified since 2019, he added, showing the ‘serious nature of the issue we found’.
‘The public, and the law, rightly expect those involved in charities to make an unambiguous distinction between their personal interests and those of the charity and the beneficiaries they are there to serve,’ Mr Holdsworth said.
‘This did not happen in the case of the Captain Tom Foundation. We found repeated instances of a blurring of boundaries between private and charitable interests, with Mr and Mrs Ingram-Moore receiving significant personal benefit.
‘Together, the failings amount to misconduct and / or mismanagement.’
But the Ingram-Moores said they felt ‘unfairly and unjustly’ treated and accused the commission of ‘selective storytelling’.
In a statement, they said: ‘A credible regulatory body would provide the full truth, rather than misrepresenting, and conflating facts and timelines that align with a predetermined agenda.
‘True accountability demands transparency, not selective storytelling.’
They said the inquiry had taken a ‘serious toll on our family’s mental and physical health, unfairly tarnishing our name and affecting our ability to carry on Captain Sir Tom’s legacy’.
A spokesman for the Captain Tom Foundation said: ‘The Captain Tom Foundation is pleased with the Charity Commission’s unequivocal findings regarding the Ingram-Moores’ misconduct.
‘We join the Charity Commission in imploring the Ingram-Moores to rectify matters by returning the funds due to the Foundation, so that they can be donated to well-deserving charities as intended by the late Captain Sir Tom Moore.
‘We hope they do so immediately and without the need for further action.’