Potential scam - anyone au fait with Companies House/Charities Commission stuff?

[ScamOrNot]

TLDR Suspect a scam. Need someone who knows whether having multiple companies subject to compulsory dissolution is normal.

To state from the off, I am changing key details, sorry. 1. Because I could be completely wrong, 2. Because if I am right it could result in court proceedings.

I am very suspicious around a small charity and associated CICs that are successfully applying for grant funding from large organisation actions.

The deal as I think it may be is similar to the following:

Grant applied for to deliver activities in a local area. Eg a range of sports, food art related activities to a 2,000 kids in a socially deprived area across 6 weeks. Grant awarded.

Scheme is not advertised anywhere. The total attendance at activities is around 30 or two per day open. Delivery of the activities is commissioned to external providers. They DO deliver, but what’s billed as huge multi sport drop in sessions is a quick kick about with a company director of one of these companies with a couple of kids. The kids get a free hot meal from another provider - all two of them.

The main charity is over 200 days overdue on their accounts. There is a huge crossover between directors/trustees of the other providers. There are many companies in their names that appear to be set up and subject to being compulsorily dissolved over a number of years. So imagine Mrs S. Cam is one of the charity’s trustees, she is also current secretary of a sports activity provider and also a food provider contracted to provide services at this activity. Her companies house back story shows she’s had 15 plus other companies dissolved in the last 10 years and Google shows these ex companies have been involved in similar activities that have flopped. Other trustees have a similar picture.

I feel they could be getting grants, procuring services from their own shell companies which then never declare accounts and get shut down.

However, I know very little about whether it’s normal to have lots of companies dissolved - are they just dormant companies? I also don’t feel I have any more than gut to report anywhere yet. I could of course be entirely wrong too.

Anyone have an eye on this stuff?

2 kids attending per day so 30 overall (maybe fewer if it's the same 2 kids multiple times) when the grants they were awarded were geared to catering for 2,000?
That is a shocking utilisation of public and charitable funds.
Agree with reporting to Charity Commission and CIC regulator. They are slow to take action and if these guys have form, they may well dissolve and do their best to disappear again, but at least it's a start. If you know who the funding bodies are you could write to them as well. Usually fundees have to write a report to the grant awarder explaining how the funds were spent and how their aims were achieved. Often the actual money isn't transferred until after such a report has been delivered so by raising a flag that pretty much nothing was delivered, you may be able to help prevent some of the finds being paid across to the scammers.

It does sound dodgy. Please report it.

At best is poor governance practice, at worst it's fraud and they're profiting through the guise of a charity.

Name changed:

It's actually very easy to do, and very hard to prove. I left a charity fairly recently where two people were misusing grants.
One of them was charismatic to people he thought he could use (and a bully to others) and very dominating and manipulative. He'd protect the other one at all costs even if evidence of wrongdoing was put in front of him. People were afraid to stand up to him.
The things I saw included:

1. Getting grants for specific purposes and not buying the stuff
2. Using buzz words (eg inclusive) to imply something they weren't (I saw one group promoted as having the purpose of "community relations" which was actually their dc and friends)
3. Getting grants and also getting the item donated
4. Buying things with grants which would miraculously disappear into boot of their car never to be seen again. (I suspect sold on Fb marketplace or similar)
5. Getting grants for things that would do a publicity shot then never used (and clearly wouldn't be used)
6. When they saw a potential grant they'd look for the most expensive items of that type for applying, and then buy the cheapest.
7. I also know at least one occasion where something currently in use and perfectly fine was inexplicably suddenly broken and they applied for a grant 3x the item's value to get another.

I suspect, although I have no proof, that they'd claim the grant, tell the treasurer they were buying the item, with a screenshot of the expensive item they were buying. The treasurer would transfer the money for them to buy it, then they'd pocket the difference, whether that was because it wasn't bought or they bought a cheaper version.

The problem is that without a proper investigation which the trustees were unwilling to do, it's actually fairly difficult to prove. These were the sort of excuses:

1. We thought it was a good idea, but decided against it when we looked into it and we so we bought <x> instead.
2. "Oh, that is the reason for the group. We decided at X committee" (X committee consisted of those two and their spouses and one other person who might as well have been a puppet.)
3. You're getting mixed up. They didn't donate it in the end.
4. They were broken and I took them to the tip (funny how it was always the 2 week old one broken and not the 15 yo one)
5. Of course we'll use the specialist horse stabling kit regularly. A horse hasn't walked past this town since the 1940s only because they haven't had this in place.
6. We didn't have time to look at different items before we applied.
7. It just broke and we desperately needed another one and we didn't know how much it would be.

The trustees blindly believed everything he said because any who might have stood up to him he got rid of.
He would tell the receiver verbally how wonderful the item was. The only times they came and checked was if they were doing publicity photos. At times the item was out of the building days after the photo had been taken.
When I raised concerns nothing was done. But to get proof, you would need to look at the grants received, and the receipts and the items (if you could find them).

And trying to report is very difficult unless the trustees are listening. All response I got was that the trustees should investigate first.