Charity Commission clears four charities of theft - but not of reckless chequebook habits
No money went missing at these four charities, the regulator says, but blank cheques and weak oversight were enough to earn a formal finding of mismanagement - and the bigger 105-charity inquiry grinds on.
What actually happened
The Charity Commission has closed the book on four charities caught up in a much larger investigation into how 105 charities came to issue open cheques worth £22 million, which were then exchanged for cash between December 2021 and March 2023. The class inquiry itself was opened in May 2025 and is still running, with charities being processed and cleared in batches (“tranches”, in regulator-speak) rather than all at once.
The four named on 9 September 2026 are The Z.S.V. Trust, Bnois Jerusalem Schools, Forty Limited and Friends Of Yeshiva Daas Sholem Shotz. According to the Charity Commission’s statement, all four did issue open or blank cheques during the period in question - that part isn’t in dispute.
What the regulator found - and didn’t find
Here’s the actual claim, stripped of headline noise: the Commission says it is satisfied each of the four charities was genuinely carrying out charitable work in line with its stated purposes. In plain terms, there’s no suggestion here that money was siphoned off for personal gain or that the charitable activity itself was a sham.
What the regulator did formally conclude is a finding of misconduct and/or mismanagement against all four - not for stealing anything, but for the practice itself. Issuing a blank or “open” cheque - one where the amount or payee isn’t filled in before it leaves the charity’s hands - is flagged by the Commission as inherently high-risk, because it removes the paper trail and oversight trustees are supposed to have over how charitable funds are spent. That’s the substance of the finding: sloppy financial controls, not fraud.
It’s worth being precise about what’s confirmed versus what’s implied. The Commission states all four charities have told it they’ve stopped using blank or open cheques. It doesn’t say when they stopped, and the published notice doesn’t spell out exactly how the practice tied into the wider £22 million figure for the other 101 charities still under scrutiny - that detail simply isn’t in the release.
Who’s still on the hook
For the charities still operating, the Commission has issued a Regulatory Action Plan - effectively a to-do list for fixing governance weaknesses and tightening internal financial controls - along with direct advice and guidance to trustees on running things properly. The Commission also notes it has shared information with other government departments as part of the inquiry, though it doesn’t say which departments or why.
The bigger picture hasn’t moved much: 101 charities remain inside the class inquiry that opened in May 2025, and there’s no indication in this release of when the rest will be worked through or what the findings might look like for them.
The takeaway
Nothing here suggests donors’ money at these four charities was misused or that beneficiaries were shortchanged. What it does show is that regulators are willing to formally sanction charities for weak financial housekeeping even when the underlying charitable work checks out - a useful reminder that “misconduct” in charity law can mean bad process as much as bad intent. For everyone else caught in the wider 105-charity inquiry, this is one small resolved chapter in a story that’s still being written.