The Actors’ Benevolent Fund has reported “serious concerns” about online voting in its council election to the police and the Charity Commission, after 166 proxy votes were found to be invalid.
The results of the election were due to be announced at its annual general meeting on 17 January, but this was delayed after concerns were raised by the election’s independent scrutineer about the validity of the votes.
The charity said it discounted 166 online votes after finding that they came from just two IP addresses, 156 of those from the same place.
It said 173 votes were valid.
A spokesperson for the ABF said: “It appears a crime may have been committed and so this matter has been reported to the police and the Charity Commission.”
The regulator confirmed the charity immediately informed it of the reports of suspected electoral fraud.
An investigation carried out by ABF’s legal advisers found that 156 of the proxy votes were cast from a single IP address and 35 came from a second IP address, accounting for 50 per cent of the votes cast.
Members listed under the two IP addresses were contacted to verify their votes, the spokesperson said.
All members that the ABF was able to contact under the first IP address said they did not cast the votes online that were in their name or give authority for anyone else to do so for them, the investigation found.
The spokesperson said: “Advice from a specialist company law counsel said the votes were not valid if the organisation has reason to doubt their authenticity.
“The ABF had very substantial reason to doubt their authenticity because all of those we were able to contact in relation to IP address one confirmed they gave no authority to whoever used that IP address.”
The investigation found that most members linked to votes made via the second IP address did give authority for a proxy vote to be made online in their name.
But some said that they either did not give authority or their voting instructions were not correctly recorded.
The ABF has disregarded all 156 votes from the first IP address and 10 votes from the second.
The spokesperson said: “If we had not discovered this, the 156 invalid votes alone would have meant that all the candidates who were not on the list recommended by the ABF’s independent nominations committee would have been elected.
“With the invalid votes discounted and the valid votes counted, the ABF’s members have voted in, by a substantial majority, the 12 candidates recommended by the nominations committee.”
The eight trustees elected include its president Eshwar Alladi, the actors Simon Callow and Lesley Joseph, and barrister and TV star Rob Rinder.
Abi Eniola, Hannah Whittingham, Alex Macqueen, Marilyn Cuts, Andrew Jarvis, Sarah Alford-Smith, Jassa Ahluwalia and Patrick O’Kane were also elected.
The election comes after a long-running dispute over the charity’s governance, which saw a group of ABF’s former trustees criticise the Charity Commission for allowing an illegitimate board takeover in 2022.
The regulator, which has since said it treated the former trustees “unfairly”, ordered the charity to carry out new trustee elections after finding a “breach in process” in the board election held in December 2022.
An independent group, the nominations committee, was formed to scrutinise applications and recommended 12 trustees for election from the list of 18 candidates.
A spokesperson for former trustees, members and donors of the charity, which includes the actor and former ABF president Penelope Keith, welcomed the new council appointments and hoped they would “seek to unify the membership and heal past divisions”.
But the spokesperson said that while it was right that any irregularities in voting should be examined, the group did not view the investigation as independent because it was conducted by a firm retained by the sitting trustees without any independent IT advice or investigation.
“However, whatever decisions are made by the new council and the Charity Commission, we are of the view that this council is well-placed to unify the charity and prioritise the charity’s purpose and focus now solely on the beneficiaries.”
A spokesperson for the regulator said: “The ABF has been subject to a long and damaging dispute, which has not served the interests of the charity or its beneficiaries.
“The commission had required that the charity hold free and fair trustee elections by the end of January, and we hope that, following the outcome announced today, the charity can now move forward in unity in delivering on its important charitable purpose.”
– This article was updated on 30 January 2024 to include comments from the former trustee group