Two sentenced over charitable fund fraud

A Birmingham brother and sister were sentenced yesterday (9 Jan) for fraud relating to donated charitable funds.

Rajbinder Kaur, 55, was convicted last September for money laundering and six counts of theft amounting to £50,000 and one count under Section 60 of the Charities Act 2011 - knowingly or recklessly provide false or misleading information to the Charity Commission.

Her brother Kaldip Singh Lehal, 43, was also convicted for knowingly or recklessly providing false or misleading information to the Charity Commission.

Yesterday, Kaur was sentenced to two years and eight months imprisonment and Lehal was given a four months sentence suspended for 18 months and 80 hours of community service.

The pair, both formally of Hamstead Road, were initially arrested in July 2019 and subsequently charged in September 2019.

The trial at Birmingham Crown Court last year heard how Kaur and Lehal ran an organisation called Sikh Youth UK (SYUK) which was formed in 2016. An application was made in 2016 to the Charity Commission for SYUK to become a registered charity but when the commission asked for further information about SYUK, the information was not given so the charity application was closed.

SYUK received countless donations during fundraising events including a sponsored winter sleep out and a football tournament both in 2018.

Kaur – a former bank worker - would transfer funds from the SYUK bank to her own account and then pay off her personal debts and loans as well as sending money to others including family members.

Kaur had over 50 personal bank accounts in an attempt to make it as complicated as possible to follow the flow of stolen money.

Superintendent Annie Miller, from West Midlands Police, said: “Kaur tried to portray herself as someone naïve about financial matters despite having worked in a bank.

“SYUK was clearly a means to fund her lifestyle and pay her debts off, but in the simplest of terms Kaur was stealing large amounts of money that had been donated by local people for good causes.”

Supt Miller continued: “This has been a very long and complex investigation into fraud, and we have worked closely with the Charity Commission to bring this pair to justice.”