BLM activist jailed over £32,000 charity fraud will repay £1
‘Should she obtain assets in the future, we would have the opportunity to seek a reconfiscation order’
A BLACK LIVES MATTER activist who helped organise the protest that led to the toppling of Edward Colston’s statue has been ordered to repay just £1 despite defrauding a charity of tens of thousands.
Xahra Saleem was jailed for two-anda-half years last year after pleading guilty to one count of fraud over £32,000 in charity donations that went missing. After another charge was left to lie on file by the CPS, police have now put the total amount she is believed to have taken and spent at about £70,000.
Police have obtained a Confiscation Order under the Proceeds of Crime Act against Saleem. But because the 23-year-old spent all the money she stole in less than a year – on Ubers, beauty treatments, clothes, takeaway food deliveries and phones – the order is restricted to a nominal £1 sum, which is then allowed to increase if or when Saleem has money in the future.
The money was pledged by people across the world in a series of online fundraisers that were set up by Saleem – who was then called Yvonne Maina – both before and after the Black Lives Matter march in Bristol in June 2020.
Instead of going to the good causes to which people donated, the money was frittered away by Saleem on a range of expenses and living costs, shopping, beauty treatments, taxis and food deliveries.
Saleem pleaded guilty to one charge of fraud last year, and the court heard that about £32,000 went missing from the first online fundraiser she set up.
She was one of five young people who organised the Black Lives Matter march on June 7, 2020 that saw the Colston statue toppled.
Before the march she had set up an online fundraiser to help pay for Covid mitigation measures and other organising expenses.
When that fundraiser was set up, anyone donating was told that if there was anything left over after the march, it would be handed to a local youth organisation based in St Paul’s, called Changing Your Mindset, run by a group of mothers.
In the days after the protest, Saleem set up a second online fundraiser which she said would be money to support the legal costs of anyone arrested or charged in connection with the toppling of the statue.
It raised tens of thousands of pounds, which is understood tyo have also gone missing and never reached those who were arrested.
Six people accepted police cautions for their part in the Colston statue toppling, while four others pleaded “not guilty” and were eventually acquitted of criminal damage.
Now, police say Saleem may have taken and spent up to £70,000 from both fundraisers.
Det Con Davis said: “Saleem was instructed at Bristol Crown Court today to pay a nominal amount following due consideration of her available assets.
“Should she obtain assets in the future, we would have the opportunity to seek a re-confiscation order through the courts via Section 22 of the Proceeds of Crime Act,” he added.