Dio caper angers parents

Diocesan School for Girls’ use of donated funds to invest in an apparent large-scale fraud in the Cayman Islands has triggered a formal complaint to the Charities Service.

In a statement, Charities Service general manager Natasha Weight confirmed receipt of the complaint and said: “The matter is under consideration. As is our regular practice, we won’t be commenting further until this matter is concluded.”

The complaint, from a concerned parent with a daughter at the school, asks the Charities Service whether trustees of the Diocesan entities “exercised due care and skill, and complied with all of their obligations” in light of the investment losses.

Last week the Weekend Herald broke the news that two charitable entities connected with the school — its Heritage Foundation and the Doris Innes

Trust — had collectively invested $1.2 million with the Caymansbased Penrich Global Macro Fund, which was frozen in March following the discovery of a “significant discrepancy”.

Parents who contacted the Weekend Herald this week were scathing of the investment decision.

“Horrendous, how could this happen? We’d donated money to Dio — to see them waste it like that is pretty disappointing,” said one.

“Clearly there were not ‘robust governance and investment protocols in place’, otherwise they would not have wasted so much money fundraised through the efforts of the community,” said another.

The concerned parents did not wish to be named, to avoid repercussions from school