The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator is assessing a complaint that an Edinburgh-based charity run by Reform UK’s Scottish leader is not registered with the regulator.
Lord Malcolm Offord previously announced that should he be elected today, his MSP salary would be donated to his charity the Badenoch Trust.
Offord, who is standing for Inverclyde, is a trustee of the charity and his entry in the register of interests on the UK Parliament website says he had shares in the organisation.
On Companies House, he is listed as the director and secretary of the Badenoch Trust.
The trust is a grantmaking charity supporting organisations in sectors including children and young carers, mental illness, medical research and the promotion of education and the arts.
But the OSCR said it had received a concern regarding the charity’s lack of registration in Scotland and was assessing the complaint to see if there were issues for the regulator to address.
According to the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005, all charities representing themselves as charities in Scotland must register with the OSCR, including those that are established or registered as charities in other legal jurisdictions.
There are some exceptions for cross-border charities under the act, the OSCR’s website states, but this applies where organisations do not have substantive activity in Scotland.
The organisation is registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales, with Scotland being listed as the charity’s sole jurisdiction.
The trust’s page on the commission’s register lists an Edinburgh address, while its page on Companies House lists a London address.
Offord said the trust was a grant-making body he set up in 2007 while he was working in London, but did not directly respond to questions about the discrepancy between the charity’s two listed addresses.
“In the midst of a heated election campaign, OSCR has been sent a politically-motivated complaint following my pledge to donate my MSP salary via the Badenoch Trust,” he said.
“The trust will of course comply with anything the OSCR tells us once their investigation has concluded. All of the trust’s activities have been transparent.
“It’s a sorry state of affairs when donating to charity is demonised to generate cheap speculative headlines on the eve of an election.”
A spokesperson for the OSCR said: “OSCR has received a concern regarding the organisation. In line with our standard policies and procedures, we will assess the matters raised to determine whether there are any issues for OSCR to address.
“At this stage, this does not mean that an inquiry has been opened, nor does it indicate that the organisation has been found to have committed any wrongdoing.
“A decision on whether to take any regulatory action will be made once the assessment has been completed.”