London: An Indian-origin member of Britain's House of Lords is facing allegations of misappropriation of nearly 600,000 pounds in charity money to fund his lavish lifestyle. Lord Bhatia, is accused of funding his own lifestyle through the money of the Ethnic Minority Foundation (EMF), which the 81-year-old businessman had helped set up in 1999 to meet the needs of Britain's minority ethnic communities, a BBC investigation revealed. The EMF raises around 1 million pounds a year, which is distributed for causes in India and the UK.
The peer was its chairman in an unpaid role until 2009 and, the charity says, later offered to take over when the chief executive left to monitor projects in India. The charity's board of trustees claims this arrangement was never formalised, and that it was unaware of a 100,000 pound annual contract paid to a consultancy firm owned by Lord Bhatia. Lawyers representing Bhatia said Lord Bhatia believed the charity had misled the BBC and the EMF in fact owed him more than 250,000 pounds and that legal cases are ongoing. "He was using the charity to run his own lifestyle really, and that was wrong," Anil Bhanot, who became EMF's treasurer in 2012 and is now chairman, told the BBC.
The charity trustees confronted the peer in December 2012 over their suspicions after which he resigned. Lord Bhatia, who sits in the cross-benches of the Upper House, has a history of suspension from the House of Lords in 2010 over wrongly claiming 27,446 pounds of home-related expenses, which he later repaid and returned to the House in 2011. Documents now seen by BBC's 'Newsnight' programme suggest there could be further questionable parliamentary expense claims. It is alleged that between 2009 and 2010 Lord Bhatia submitted double claims for mileage on 138 times at a cost of 1,500 pounds to the British taxpayer. Lord Bhatia's lawyers say that the allegations relating to his Lords expenses are an attempt "to reopen and confuse the historical published position with the present dispute between Lord Bhatia and EMF".
