JLC to hold Newmark case review
THE JEWISH Leadership Council has begun an in-depth review of its handling of the departure of its chief executive Jeremy Newmark in 2013, following last week’s JC revelations.
An internal audit conducted by the JLC five years ago alleged that Mr Newmark had billed it for thousands of pounds of unwarranted personal expenses over a two-year period, as well as inflating the cost of JLC projects.
Mr Newmark, who resigned on the grounds of ill-health, has denied any wrongdoing, dismissing the audit document as “a litany of false allegations” which he blamed on a disgruntled employee.
Simon Johnson, JLC chief executive, said on Wednesday that the charity was taking “decisive action to address the concerns which have been raised” in response to the publication of the allegations.
“We have commissioned an independent law firm and are appointing an independent accountancy firm to advise the JLC,” Mr Johnson said.“We want to ensure no stone is left unturned in understanding past events and that there is as much visibility as possible.”
Mr Newmark would be invited to
participate in the process, he added.
The JC understands Jo Coleman, a partner at Womble Bond Dickinson and an expert in charity law, has been retained by the JLC.
The JLC has also promised to cooperate with the Charity Commission, which wrote to it at the end of last week to say the allegations raised “serious potential regulatory concerns”.
But the JLC has declined to answer a number of questions from the JC: how much money was put back into the JLC’s accounts; why the allegations were made known only to its trustees and not to its full council of membership; and why there was no mention of any financial inquiry in its published accounts for the year 2013.
The JLC has also refused to give a guarantee that the full results of its review would be made public. Asked if the findings would be published, a spokeswoman said there was a “firm commitment from the JLC to implement all necessary steps in order to get this right, and once this information is known, there will be no delay in reporting it to all stakeholders and the community”.
The review would be led by the independent advisers “in conjunction” primarily with Mr Johnson and Jonathan Goldstein, the JLC chairman, she explained.
JLC trustees would have “full visibility of activities and actions being undertaken; the decisions that need to be taken will depend on what is discovered”.
The lawyers and accountants involved in the review had not been engaged by the JLC previously, she said.
Mr Newmark left as chief executive in October 2013 following a meeting a few days earlier with the JLC’s then chairman Sir Mick Davis and fellow trustee Leo Noe about the allegations.
Sir Mick is understood to have told trustees it had not been proven that Mr Newmark had acted for personal enrichment.
Last week Sir Mick said the trustees had agreed that, with regard for Mr Newmark’s welfare and that of his family, no further action had been warranted.
Individual trustees, he said, had ensured the JLC accounts were “made good and whole”.
Another trustee, Stephen Pack, told the JC: “Any monies that were alleged to have gone were put back.”
A spokesman for HW Fisher & Company, the chartered accountants which audited the JLC’s published 2013 accounts, said it could not discuss them because of “client confidentiality”. But they included “all the information required under the Charities Act 2011 and the relevant Financial Reporting Standard”.
A member of the JLC’s council in 2013 — which is made up of representatives of its affiliated charities and organisations — said the first he had heard of the allegations was when he had read them in the
JC. “We were not told anything about these matters. We were totally in the dark,” he said.
Another council member in that period said he “knew nothing about the episode at all”.
The representative of one charity on the council, which is due to hold a regular meeting next week, commented: “Unless an organisation is incredibly clear when trouble emerges and deals with the issue in full and transparently, it is simply an encouragement for the press and others to dig deeper. Eventually, it is impossible to keep things under wraps and it gets worse and worse.”
Mr Newmark — who contested the Finchley and Golders Green seat for Labour in last year’s general election and was elected as a councillor in Hertsmere in the autumn — quit as chairman of the Jewish Labour Movement following a meeting of its executive last week.
Peter Mason, JLM national secretary, said Mr Newmark had announced “his decision to step down from his role as JLM national chair to enable him to act in a clear and individual capacity in seeking redress following the publication of historic allegations about him and others during his tenure at the JLC. Jeremy has refuted these allegations”.
Mr Mason stressed there were “no allegations whatsoever against Jeremy that relate to the JLM”.
Morris Bright, Conservative leader of Hertsmere Borough Council, met Mr Newmark on Tuesday and is understood to have asked him to step down as a councillor while seeking redress.
We were not told anything about these matters’
being quite unwilling (perish the thought!) to put themselves up for election as Deputies, and (in any case) holding the Board in contempt as a useless talking-shop, would simply go their own way in terms of the formation and implementation of communal policy.
The mainly male moneyed machers had — somehow — to be re-engaged with the Board, and the formation of a council — on which they would be represented along with the Board — seemed at the time a practical way of achieving this end.
In a statement issued on February 27, 2004, Mr Grunwald emphasised that the JLC’s purpose was “not to supplant or replace the Board, but rather to support the work of the Board and other organisations within the community”.
But that was not how the mainly male moneyed machers saw it. During Mr Grunwald’s presidency of the Deputies, he also chaired the JLC. But when his presidency came to an end in 2009 the JLC was reorganised.
Mr Grunwald’s successor as Board president, Vivian Wineman, became chair of the JLC’s Council of Membership. But although the JLC’s website describes this Council as its “top body”, that was highly misleading: it was and is the trustees who are legally responsible for the actions of the charity.
Mr Wineman, as president of the Deputies, was indeed named ex-officio as a trustee. But the position of chair of the trustees went to multimillionaire Mick Davis.
At one level, it’s only fair to say that the JLC has done some useful work. It has, for example, implemented a bulk-purchasing scheme to assist Jewish charities in maximising their purchasing power. It has established a useful, ongoing review focused on Jewish schooling in the UK.
The problem was that all this activity had been conducted within a framework of ambition.
The JLC’s ambition, driven by Sir Mick and his megawealthy old boys’ network, was to supersede the Board of Deputies as the major conduit for dialogue between the British state and British Jews.
And so it was that the JLC unceremoniously elbowed its way on to the communal top table. When, last September, Prime Minister Theresa May held the now-customary annual meeting with Jewish communal leaders, it was the JLC that (once again) organised this carefully choreographed encounter and claimed pride of place at the Downing Street discussions.
This overweening, pompous ambition has now come to a juddering halt.
The most important paragraphs in the now-leaked JLC internal audit report do not concern its former chief executive, Jeremy Newmark. The most damning and damaging paragraphs refer to the manner in which the JLC apparently discharged its responsibilities.
“It appears [said the report, dating from 2013] to
be standard practice in the JLC to falsify information relating to finances. Member organisations are constantly overcharged…
“The Lead and Partnerships for Jewish Schools… divisions are also unjustifiably forced to absorb significant operational costs without any consultation or sight of the real figures.”
For this alleged “standard practice” the JLC — including its past trustees — will now certainly have to answer to the Charity Commission. And if the reported falsification of information is true, then the matter should surely be investigated by the police as well.
From time to time, there has been talk of merging the Board and the JLC. But “merger” is just a polite word for “takeover”.
It is all very well for the JLC to announce a belated “independent review.” The time is now right for the elected Board of Deputies to take over the unelected Jewish Leadership Council, and then shut it down.
The pompous ambition has now come to a halt