The wheels of the Charity Commission don’t always grind quickly, but they can be pretty thorough. Nearly two years after opening its investigation into the Joint Armed Forces Legal Advocacy Service (JAFLAS), it has thrown the book at the charity.
Readers with long memories will recall that JAFLAS was founded by former solicitor Alan Blacker, who came to the media’s attention in 2014 when a district judge chastised him for turning up in court looking like ‘something out of Harry Potter’. Blacker was struck off in 2016 for accounts breaches and making misleading statements about his qualifications.
His legal troubles escalated in 2020 when he was convicted of dishonestly claiming disability living allowance.
The Charity Commission’s report into JAFLAS, published this week, found that despite this conviction, Blacker ‘continued to hold significant control over the charity’s funds and remained listed as a director of the charity and a “person with significant control” at Companies House’.
Donations made through the charity’s website went to Blacker’s own bank account, which was frozen in July 2022. And, when faced with investigation, it found the charity’s trustees to be ‘uncooperative and obstructive’.
‘On numerous occasions, legally-binding orders and directions of the commission were ignored or not answered in full,’ the report states. The charity was dissolved in December 2022 and removed from the public register.
Blacker has now been barred from being a charity trustee or holding a senior position in a charity for 15 years.
