A charity fronted by the former MP George Galloway may not have conducted any charitable activity or distributed any humanitarian aid despite claiming to have gathered £1m in public donations, according to an investigation from the charity regulator. Viva Palestina was established in early 2009 and launched a large-scale media fundraising campaign to finance aid convoys to Gaza from the UK, bringing food, medicine, medical equipment and essential goods and services. “It’s taken the Charity Commission getting on for a decade to come up with this nonsense. Viva Palestina took hundreds of vans, cars, lorries, ambulances, you name it, to Gaza and they were not empty I can vouchsafe. “Finally, to reiterate, VP was set up as a campaign, it was the Charity Commission, in an undisguised attempt to shut down the politics, which decided it was a charity.

Source: The Guardian June 06, 2019 16:24 UTC