Charity and the naive donor
The Court of Appeal sentenced the president of charity foundation to 5 years in prison and fined him 120,000 dinars, for defrauding donors, and embezzling 211,000 dinars of the charity funds.
This issue and similar others are only the tip of the iceberg of corruption in charity societies and organizations. The absence of laws to regulate the activity of collecting charity money is tempting fraudsters, add to this the spread of ignorance among the people, especially those who do not care where their money goes as long as they please God, and therefore the responsibility of this crime falls on the one who stole the money and the legislator who failed to set controls and restrictions, as well as the naïve donor.
Since its establishment, the Human Friendship Society Board of Directors has applied the highest levels of transparency and governance to the work of the Society, and sought to make the members of the Board and the rest of the founders of the Society its largest donors because of their belief in its unprecedented charity work and social goals, and their voluntary work with no return. It has also prevented everyone from employing their relatives in the association.
For more transparency, the Board insisted on publishing the association’s budget on its website, in addition to publishing it in two newspapers annually, with the publication of a list showing the names of everyone who donated to the association on its official website, for everyone to see.
The Board also forbade deducting any percentage from any received donation, or the so-called percentage for the “in charge of it”, as some associations do. It also gives each donor the right to direct his donation to achieve any of the association’s goals or activities.
The charity work is full of scars represented by its beneficiaries and from millions of semi-loose donations. The number of people who entered this field and became rich is countless. Most of them cover each other, and we have seen this on more than one occasion, the last of which was what happened during the ‘Faza’a Watan’ campaign, when during the Corona crisis, a group of charities managed to collect nearly ten million dinars which were subsequently lost within days in various ways and forms. Something similar happened to the group of the other sect, and this is what we have already explained in more than one article.
The struggle we see in obtaining Kuwaiti citizenship is mainly due to the financial benefits that its holder receives. In the same way, the rush to establish charity societies often aims not to do charity work, but rather the huge financial benefits obtained by those who run these societies.
If the Ministry of Social Affairs prevented associations from deducting the fat percentage for the “in charge,” most of the associations would have closed their doors. There is no need for sixty charities.
If the government or the Ministry of Social Affairs is really serious about cleaning up the charity institution, then it should apply the work model of the Human Friendship Society.
An example of the exploitation of charity work for personal benefit is the campaign carried out by one of the parties which launched a campaign to collect 100,000 dinars to prepare preachers.
I want one official to convince me that it is possible to monitor how this huge amount is spent on preparing and hiring preachers, determining their nationalities and salaries, and dozens of other questions.
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