Lauren Booth, Cherie Blair’s sister, has been stripped of her status as a charity trustee after £90,000 raised by her Islamic appeal went missing.
Ms Booth, a convert, cannot account for nearly half the spending by her fund to help Palestinians and Muslim converts, the Charity Commission said.
Her Islamic-law husband, Sohale Ahmed, 53, from Stockport, whom she wed in a religious ceremony and made chief executive of the appeal, has been banned from serving as a trustee of any charity for four and a half years.
Ms Booth, 50, a journalist, has been an outspoken and tireless advocate of Islam since converting in 2010 after having a “holy experience” in Iran.
She is the daughter of the late Tony Booth, the actor and left-wing firebrand, and his lover Pamela Smith, a model. Cherie’s mother was Booth’s wife Gale Howard, an actress.
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Ms Booth worked for the Tehran-financed English language Press TV, which was eventually banned by Ofcom. She created the charity Peacetrail in 2013 with the object of advancing the Islamic religion and relieving poverty. It operated in Britain and the Palestinian territories.
The Charity Commission removed her as a trustee after finding her responsible for “misconduct and/or mismanagement”. She is prevented from serving on the board of any charity unless she wins a waiver from the regulator or the courts.
The commission discovered that at least £92,110.35 of expenditure “remained completely unaccounted for”. The charity, now dissolved, withdrew about £40,000 from cashpoints without the trustees being able to provide evidence to account for all the funds. Receipts showed that Peacetrail spent money on valet parking, first-class rail travel, accommodation in Qatar, Bahrain and Turkey, TV licences and household goods that were “not clearly linked to the activities of the charity”.
Ms Booth has long been a champion of Palestinians, travelling in 2008 to Gaza on a “peace boat” to publicise an Israeli blockade. Her charity transferred £70,149 to an agent in the occupied territories but “did not have any evidence of the end use of this expenditure”, the commission states. The fund sent the Palestine agent £1,219 to furnish an “office bedroom”. An email obtained by the inquiry provided a breakdown of the furnishings, but the illustration turned out to be an image of a room at the Istanbul Hilton.
Ms Booth was married to Mr Ahmed when he began working for the charity. She signed his contract of employment but there was “no evidence that this conflict of interest was ever managed”. Mr Ahmed received self-authorised salary payments totalling £46,500.
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Ms Booth said she disputed the commission’s findings and insisted that the money had been fully accounted for. She said the charity had provided photographic and film evidence and visited families to see the work carried out.
Ms Booth’s fellow trustee, Nadeem Ahmed, 57, a computer consultant who was also removed as a trustee by the commission, told The Times that he had tried to help with compliance.