A former bank worker has been jailed for two years and eight months, and her brother has been handed a suspended sentence following a charity fraud case.

Rajbinder Kaur, 55, from Birmingham was handed the sentence after being convicted last year of money laundering and theft of funds amounting to £50,000 from an organisation she ran called Sikh Youth UK (SYUK).

She has also been convicted under section 60 of the 2011 Charities Act of knowingly or recklessly providing false or misleading information to the Charity Commission.

Meanwhile, her brother Kaldip Singh Lehal, who ran SYUK with his sister, has also been convicted under charity law of giving false or misleading information to the regulator. He has been given a four-month sentence suspended for 18 months and 80 hours of community service.

They formed SYUK and applied for it to become a registered charity in 2016. But its requests from the regulator for more information were ignored and the application was closed.

Despite this it received “countless donations” during fundraising events, including a sponsored winter sleep out and football tournament in 2018, according to West Midlands Police (WMP).

The siblings had initially been arrested in July 2019 and charged in September that year.

Last year’s trial heard that Kaur “would transfer funds from the SYUK bank to her own account and then pay off her personal debts and loans as well as sending money to others including family members”, said WMP.

The police force added that Kaur “had over 50 personal bank accounts in an attempt to make it as complicated as possible to follow the flow of stolen money”.

WMP superintendent Annie Miller said: “Kaur tried to portray herself as someone naïve about financial matters despite having worked in a bank.

“SYUK was clearly a means to fund her lifestyle and pay her debts off, but in the simplest of terms Kaur was stealing large amounts of money that had been donated by local people for good causes.”

“This has been a very long and complex investigation into fraud, and we have worked closely with the Charity Commission to bring this pair to justice.”

Charity Commission involvement

The Commission has welcomed the sentencing of Kaur and Lehal adding that “it is a significant step for individuals to be convicted for providing the Charity Commission with false or misleading information, under section 60 of the Charities Act 2011, and the sentences underline how seriously the courts take this crime”.

Tim Hopkins, the regulator’s deputy director for specialist investigations and standards said: “We have worked closely with the police on this case to make sure that these actions did not go unpunished.

“In working together, the Commission and the police were able to effectively deliver justice, as well as uphold public trust in charitable giving.”

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