Former Mencap PA pleads guilty to fraud at Crown Court

Asra Yildiz, 32, of Hackney in east London appeared at Blackfriars Crown Court, charged with defrauding the charity of £34,000

A former personal assistant to the chief executive of the learning disability charity Mencap has pleaded guilty to a £34,000 fraud.

Asra Yildiz, 32, from Hackney, east London, pleaded guilty at Blackfriars Crown Court last month to one count of fraud by abuse of position.

Yildiz, who was employed by the charity from 2011 until her dismissal in 2014 when the allegations came to light, was the PA to Mark Goldring, who left Mencap in 2013 to become chief executive of Oxfam, and his successor, Jan Tregelles.

It is alleged that Yildiz fraudulently spent £34,768.20 using a company credit card between 18 November 2012 and 29 April 2014.

Yildiz had originally pleaded not guilty to the offence, but changed her plea at a hearing on 20 October.

Tregelles said: “Asra Yildiz had worked at Mencap for a number of years until her dismissal in April 2014. She was in a position of trust, which she repeatedly abused by falsifying expenses and other claims for personal gain. Asra let herself, her Mencap colleagues and Mencap donors down.

“As the recent fraud report produced by the Charity Commission made clear, every charity needs to be alert to insider fraud.”

Yildiz will be sentenced next week.

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Charities to challenge £340k legacy in High Court

Four charities are contesting a will by Tracey Leaning, who died from cancer in 2015

Four charities, including the Dogs Trust, are challenging a £340,000 will at the High Court after the charities were cut out of the final estate, according to media reports.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper has reported today that Dogs Trust, World Animal Protection, Friends of the Animals and Heart Research UK are challenging a will by Tracey Leaning, who died of cancer in 2015.

The newspaper says that Leaning had written a will in 2007 that left her property and money to the charities, worth an estimated £340,000.

But following her diagnosis in 2014, Leaning wrote another will, which was handwritten and witnessed by a neighbour, that left her house, belongings and savings to her partner, Richard Guest, the newspaper says.

The newspaper reports that Guest met Leaning between the completion of the first and second wills, and has offered the charities £60,000 and the house in trust to settle the case.

The Dogs Trust was unable to provide a comment before Third Sector’s deadline.

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Supreme Court ruling on employment tribunal fees ‘not great news for charities’

Lawyers say the ruling that the fees are unlawful will lead to increasing numbers of ‘try-on’ claims

The Supreme Court ruling that the fees charged for people to bring employment tribunal claims are unlawful will lead to an increase in the number of cases brought against charities, lawyers have warned.

In 2013, the government introduced fees of up to £1,200 for people to bring employment tribunal claims in a bid to reduce the number of spurious cases faced by employers. There was previously no charge for bringing a case.

The fees, which led to a dramatic fall in the number of claims dealt with by employment tribunals, were yesterday ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court after a challenge brought by the trade union Unison, which said they prevented workers from accessing justice.

William Garnett, a partner in the employment department at the law firm Bates Wells Braithwaite, said he thought the ruling would lead to an increase in the number of spurious “try-on” claims against charities.

“This is not great news for employers in the third sector,” he said. “The reason is that, arguably, people on lower rates of pay were disproportionately disadvantaged by the fees regime. The third sector has a lot of low-paid people.”

Garnett said charities might be seen as soft targets for employees trying to bring employment tribunal claims because organisations would be keen to protect their reputations and therefore more likely to want to settle cases.

“It is a sector that does get taken advantage of,” he said. “Of course there are a lot of genuine claims, but there are a lot of spurious ones also.”

Nick Le Riche, a partner in the employment team at the law firm Bircham Dyson Bell, agreed that the ruling would lead to an increase in the number of claims against charities and said the ruling might result in people trying to bring claims that were otherwise out of time.

They might argue that under the old fees structure they could not afford to bring the case in the time allowed, he said, and argue that the claim should be allowed in the new environment.

But both Garnett and Le Riche said they thought the government would try to reintroduce a new charging regime.

Garnett said the Supreme Court had not ruled that any fees were unlawful, just the fee structure previously implemented.

“This is not the end of the story,” he said. “I’m sure the government will be back with a new fees regime.”

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