Oxfam face funding axe over scandal
Minister in crunch talks
OXFAM face having tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash withdrawn amid anger at sexual misconduct claims against their staff.
Penny Mordaunt, the International Development Secretary, yesterday told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show the alleged cover-up of aid workers’ use of prostitutes in Haiti was “shocking”.
She will meet the charity’s bosses today to demand answers over the 2011 incidents and said Oxfam had failed in their “moral leadership” over the “scandal”.
She warned: “If they don’t hand over all the information they have, then I can’t work with them any more.”
Oxfam received £32million from her department last year.
Watchdogs the Charity Commission said Oxfam told them about a misconduct probe on inappropriate sexual behaviour – but not about potential sex crimes involving minors.
Oxfam said claims about under age girls are unproven.
Mordaunt said the allegations were “a complete betrayal of both the people Oxfam were there to help and also the people that sent them there to do that job”.
Women believed to be prostitutes also visited the Oxfam team in Chad, Africa, in 2006, it was claimed yesterday. And 120 workers for British charities have been accused of sexual harassment in the past year.