ONE of the long standing trustees of the Captain Tom Foundation has quit - opening fresh doubts about the charity’s future months after trying to oust the Covid hero’s son-in-law from the board.
Solicitor Simon DeMaid, from Milton Keynes, is one of three trustees of the not-for-profit, which raised money for good causes, with the other two being chair Stephen Jones and Captain Tom Moore's son-in-law Colin Ingram-Moore.
Daughter Hannah Ingram-Moore quit as £85k-a-year interim CEO after nine months as it was revealed that she personally - and her companies - raked in tens of thousands from the foundation.
DeMaid, a partner at Howes Percival law firm, ceased his directorship of the company attached to the charity, Companies House records show and has also been removed as a trustee on the Charities Commission website.
He did not respond to The Sun's questions on why he stepped down from the role.
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The Times reported in July that there was an alleged “wedge” between Colin and the other two trustees with the relationship having “broken down to such an extent that the two trustees investigated how they could remove him from the board”.
Yet the foundation’s articles of association - which specifies the rules and regulations of the charity - dictated that there had to be three trustees, not two.
The latest annual report says they had three new trustees “willing to join the Board” but they “all withdrew their applications”, which begs the question as to how much longer the charity will be able to function if there are only two trustees.
To add to its woes, the report goes onto state that Jack Gilbert, who replaced Hannah as CEO, left last October after just six months to “reduce all operational costs to an absolute minimum”.
DeMaid and Jones also supposedly wanted to drop Captain Tom’s name and rebrand the charity to “championing the elderly" after a swathe of negative publicity.
In July, the charity announced on its website that it had stopped fundraising and now lies dormant until the Charities Commission's inquiry is complete, adding: “Once the findings of the Statutory Inquiry have been communicated, The Captain Tom Foundation will be in a better position to make a decision in relation to its future”.
Another idea was to close it completely, but the commission blocked that move, as there’s an ongoing inquiry.
Last month, Hannah and Colin lost an appeal against the local council, who ordered them to pull down an unauthorised luxury spa in their garden, which they had built in her father’s name and said it was going to be partly used by the foundation “and it’s charitable objectives”.
A tearful Hannah revealed on Piers Morgan’s Talk TV show that they kept £800,000 from the three books her dad had written - claiming he had wanted them to keep the profits.
Their consultancy firm Maytrix Group also took up to £100,000 in furlough money and £47,500 in Covid loans despite bumper profits during the pandemic.
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It also charged the foundation thousands of pounds' worth of expenses.
According to its accounts, Maytrix Group was handed back £37,942 in reimbursements “in respect of website costs (£5,030), photography costs (£550), office rental (£4,500), telephone costs (£656) and third-party consultancy costs (£27,205).”
