The Charity Commission has opened an statutory inquiry into a faith-based charity because of “serious concerns” about a Facebook video post.
The regulator said it was looking into the Al-Manar Centre Trust, which was founded in 2009 to “educate the public about the Islamic faith” and is based in Cardiff, after the charity posted a video on its Facebook account in November which the regulator said “raised concerns about the charity’s social media controls”.
The video was not created by the charity but was posted on one of its channels and the regulator said “could suggest support for Hamas”, which is a proscribed terrorist organisation.
The commission said it expects all trustees to “do all in their power to protect their charities from risk of misuse”.
It said this includes “implementing procedures to prevent the promotion of views which could be considered harmful or unlawful”.
The regulator said: “Following the commission’s intervention, the charity’s trustees have removed the video and taken steps to improve their social media protocols.”
The commission said its inquiry would examine the trustees’ administration, management and governance of the charity as well as the events leading to the posting of the video.
The regulator said it would seek assurances that improvements made to the charity’s social media protocols were being implemented and that these were “sufficiently robust” to prevent this from happening again.
The Al-Manar Centre Trust has been contacted for comment.