A most cancers charity boss who ploughed public donations into constructing an enormous Welsh dragon statue has been ordered to pay greater than £100,000 to native good causes.
Simon Wingett’s basis, Frank Wingett Most cancers Aid, ran a store in Wrexham Maelor Hospital, North Wales, however had not made a single charitable donation in seven years by the point of its closure in 2018.
As an alternative, his accounts confirmed he had invested £410,000 of the charity’s earnings throughout the identical interval in a venture to create a 210ft dragon sculpture close to the A5 in Chirk, Wrexham.
Mr Wingett has lengthy claimed the large bronze dragon, which had planning permission to be erected on a former colliery website, would grow to be a vacationer attraction to rival well-known landmarks such because the Angel of the North.
The dragon has not been constructed.
The charity was arrange by his father to purchase tools and sources for most cancers sufferers in Wrexham and the encompassing space after he was identified with throat most cancers within the Eighties.
Its final cost in 2011 to Betsi Cadwaladr College Well being Board was for £4,500.
Following an investigation by the Charity Fee which started in 2017, Mr Wingett was banned from performing as a trustee of any charity for 10 years.
He has now been ordered by the Excessive Court docket of Justice to pay greater than £117,000, which will probably be distributed to native charities supporting the aid of most cancers sufferers handled in Wrexham.
The charity regulator stated on Thursday that the dragon statue venture “has no connection to advancing the charity’s goals and, up to now, no statue has been constructed”.
Tracy Howarth, the fee’s assistant director of casework, stated: “Charity trustees maintain vital positions of belief.
“We – and the general public – count on trustees to make sure monetary choices are taken in the most effective pursuits of the charity and people it serves to learn.
“Mr Wingett’s important misuse of funds was an abuse of the belief positioned in him by the numerous donors to the charity.
“This ruling will make sure the charitable proceeds raised are actually directed to the advantage of these in the local people they had been supposed for.”