Porn firm boss agreed £435,000 pay deal for abortion charity chief
A CHARITY chief’s controversial £434,500 pay package was approved by the boss of a porn company whose own social enterprise received money from the organisation.
Chief executive Simon Cooke’s salary and bonus at Marie Stopes International (MSI) have made him the UK’s third-highest paid charity boss. But the Charity Commission has now asked the organisation, which received £62million of taxpayer funding last year, why it agreed the deal.
Mr Cooke’s salary rose from £173,067 to £217,250 last year and he was awarded a performance-related bonus of the same amount, taking his total pay to £434,500.
The increase was agreed by US businessman Philip Harvey, who chairs MSI’s remuneration committee. The 81-year-old is also president of Adam & Eve, an adult entertainment company, and chairman of DKT International, a birth control charity that has received hundreds of thousands of pounds from MSI, including a contract worth £921,000 last year to provide contraception to women in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
MSI also accepted £505,000 worth of family-planning products from Mr Harvey’s charity in Ethiopia last year, while DKT’s subsidiary Woman Care supplied contraceptive implants worth £162,000 to MSI in Madagascar.
Charity experts said Mr Harvey should have removed himself from discussions about Mr Cooke’s pay.
‘Marie Stopes is a great charity and its actions and behaviour must be seen to be beyond reproach,’ said Sir Stephen Bubb, acting director of the Oxford Institute of Charity. ‘Clearly it is time for a governance review there.’
MSI offers contraception and abortions to women in 37 countries and runs 60 UK abortion clinics.
Mr Cooke was recruited from Supermax, a razor-blade company based in Dubai, in 2013 and the charity’s income rose to a record £296.8million last year. The average salary for a head of Britain’s 100 biggest charities is £178,000.
MSI said no public funds were used in its chief executive’s pay packet, adding: ‘As two of the largest family planning providers worldwide, it is in no way unusual for MSI to partner with DKT where the work demands it. To suggest this funding was somehow linked to any individual’s remuneration is not just wrong but a total misunderstanding of how charities operate.’
The Charity Commission said: ‘Our guidance makes clear that even the perception that there is a conflict of interest can damage a charity. Trustees should consider whether the best thing is to remove a conflict of interest.’
The Department for International Development, which gave £62.3 million to MSI last year, said: ‘Our funding supports MRI’s work in the poorest parts of the world. Our priority is to drive value for British taxpayers’ money and DFID awards contracts on that basis.’