After an investigation that has taken four years, four senior figures within the cult-like ‘Church of Bling’ – which had close ties to Croydon’s Conservative Party – have been banned by the Charity Commission.
By STEVEN DOWNES
‘Bling-loving’: Tobi Adeboyega, of the cult-like SPAC Nation
The Charity Commission has today published a report following a four-year inquiry into the “Church of Bling”, Croydon-based SPAC Nation, in which it has handed out lengthy bans for four of the cult-like church’s leading figures.
But the head of SPAC Nation, or the Salvation Proclaimers Anointed Church, the self-appointed “Pastor” Tobi Adeboyega, is unmentioned in the whole of the 4,200-word Charity Commission report.
Inside Croydon first reported in 2019 how SPAC was accused of a wide range of misconduct, from controlling abuse of young people, to sexual abuse to organised fraud, and how it was subject to a Met Police fraud squad investigation.
In early 2020, SPAC’s “trap houses” in Croydon were raided by police. These “Take Risk and Prosper” houses were supposed to be refuges for young people who had been caught up in drug and knife gangs, but were also often the homes of leading pastors in SPAC Nation.
One member of SPAC Nation said she was persuaded to commit benefit fraud by a trustee, while another said she had a £5,000 loan taken out in her name without her knowledge. Others said they’d been pushed to donate blood for cash to pay their “tithes” to the church.
No charges were brought and the church always denied any wrongdoing. It further denied the allegations of fraud, abuse and exploitation.
But in June 2022, SPAC Nation’s business entity was forced into liquidation when a government investigation found it could not account for £1.87million in expenditure.
SPAC was run by a former property investor Tobi Adegboyega.
“Bling-loving” Adegboyega, who styled himself as a “pastor”, lived in a £2.5million mansion, with its own swimming pool, on a private estate in the Shirley Hills. It was said that at one point, the Shirley Hills mansion was operating as a trap house for almost two dozen youngsters, all of them with criminal records.
Nice ‘vicarage’: the £2.5m-valued mansion in the Shirley Hills where the SPAC Nation leader lives
Adegboyega enjoyed the high life, wearing designer clothes, flash jewellery and driving top-end sports cars – apparently all funded through his “church”. As well as his Lamborghini with number plate “PA5TOR”, Adeboyega was also seen to have a £150,000 Rolls-Royce and a couple of Range Rovers parked in the house’s commodious drive.
“Pastor Tobi” staged weekly services attended by hundreds of worshippers at the Grand Sapphire Hotel, off the Purley Way. At these meetings, the main objectives appeared to be for young church-goers to pay over large sums of cash in the church collection.
Church leaders – “pastors” – would spend much of their time schooling young church-goers into how to claim business loans and grants, with little real intention of ever establishing proper businesses or repaying the loans.
In 2018, according to the church’s own accounts, SPAC raised £1.17million from what it called “Tithes and Offerings” – donations from followers.
Seats of power: in 2019, SPAC ‘pastor’ and council election candidate Jayde Edwards (left) was given a prime position close to PM Boris Johnson, with Croydon Tories Mario Creatura and William Perry (son of Mayor Jason Perry) not too far away.
At one point in 2019, SPAC Nation also played a significant role in political campaigning in Croydon, backing the General Election campaign of Tory candidate Mario Creatura, and with one of its “pastors” installed as a candidate in a council by-election. Adeboyega and the council by-election candidate, Jayde Edwards, were photographed at that year’s Tory Party Conference, just a couple of places away from Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Creatura was not the first Croydon Conservative to cultivate SPAC Nation – his former boss, Gavin Barwell, too, had visited SPAC services and been photographed with the cult church’s leadership.
SPAC Nation was removed from the authorised list of charities in June 2022. The Charity Commission’s report published today has led to the banning as charity trustees of Ebo Dougan for 10 years and Krystle Sarkodie, Mabinty Sesay and Adedapo Adegboyega for 12 years.
“The report concludes that the charity’s trustees are responsible for serious misconduct or mismanagement over safeguarding practices and financial failures over a substantial period of time,” the Charity Commission said.
The Commission says that it “identified serious financial, governance and safeguarding concerns”. These included that the majority of the charity’s income and spending was not going through a bank account.
Perhaps most insidious, the inquiry’s findings published today show that the charity’s safeguarding practices were also inadequate.
SPAC’s “trap houses” were “intended to support the local community”, the Commission’s report says. At one point, SPAC operated around 20 trap houses in Croydon and across south London. “The houses were also the homes of church leaders, and the inquiry subsequently found the nature of the relationship between the charity and the houses was unclear.”
Failings in the trustees’ oversight of safeguarding amounted to misconduct or mismanagement in the administration of the charity.
The regulator’s inquiry also found that the charity’s financial record-keeping was inadequate. The Charity Commission report says: “Donations and expenditure were not properly recorded and there was also found to be a lack of segregation of duties between the pastors and the trustees. As the assets of the charity were not held centrally, the trustees did not have oversight and control of the charity’s assets, and these were exposed to the risk of misapplication and/or misappropriation.”
Banned: Thornton Heath’s Ebo Dougan (far left), a former SPAC director and trustee, photographed at a Women of the City awards at the Berkeley Hotel in London in Dec 2021 with ‘Pastor’ Tobi Adegboyega (right). SPAC was already subject to a series of investigations
The Commission says that it issued an order in December 2019 directing the charity to bank all of its cash.
“However the trustees informed the regulator that they had decided to stop collecting donations. The trustees never reversed this decision… Trustees are responsible for their charity’s financial security and should have plans for generating and spending income.
The inquiry found that the trustees’ operation of the charity put funds at risk resulting in a finding of misconduct and/or mismanagement.
In January 2022, the Insolvency Service applied to the High Court for a winding up order against SPAC Nation. The petition included that the charity failed to cooperate with the Insolvency Service’s investigation; discrepancies in the information provided to the Insolvency Service and the Commission compared to that provided to its accountant; and that it operated without transparency and filed “suspicious and incorrect” accounts at Companies House and with the Charity Commission. The winding up order was issued on June 15, 2022.
Bling ban: Adedapo Adegboyega, or ‘Pastor Dapo’
Amy Spiller, the head of investigations at the Charity Commission, said: “The community placed its trust in this charity and its leaders and was sadly let down by repeated serious failings in its financial and safeguarding practices.
“Safeguarding should be a priority for all charities, and the trustees should have considered doing more to strengthen its safeguarding practices. Operating in cash also exposed the charity to risks such as loss, theft and the cash being used outside of the charity’s purposes.
“Our intervention prevents three current trustees and one former trustee from holding trustee or senior roles in other charities and so helps to protect the wider sector.”
The Charity Commission says it believes that SPAC Nation “stopped holding services and other events in person due to the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and it also subsequently ceased to operate”.
But as recently as last year, Forbes magazine reported at some length how SPAC Nation pastors had been involved in something called Women of the City magazine, in which a prominent figure was Mariam Mola. The American business magazine described Mola as “an infamous career con-artist”. Mola was also a SPAC Nation pastor.
Poor record keeping: SPAC Nation was widely condemned, but ‘Pastor’ Tobi Adeboyega is unmentioned in the Charity Commission report
Of those banned by the Charity Commission from being charity trustees, Ebo Dougan, with a home address in Thornton Heath, was listed by Companies House as a director of the church’s original company before it was wound up.
Likewise Krystle Sarkodie, with an address in Isleworth, but who in 2019 established another company, called SPAC Nation Ltd. Companies House records show that it is in business for “Human resources provision and management of human resources functions; Other social work activities without accommodation; and Activities of religious organisations.” Sarkodie’s ban from being a charity trustee may not affect her ability to hold company directorships.
Mabinty Sesay, who gives as her profession “nurse”, is another who is barred from being a charity trustee for 12 years, was also previously a director of the liquidated company.
Adedapo Adegboyega, also known as Dapo Adegboyega or “Pastor Dapo”, gets a 12-year ban from being a trustee.
Read more: Cult Church of Bling wound-up over ‘suspicious’ operations
Read more: Tory candidate’s church is under police investigation for fraud
Read more: ‘Don’t call us cult-like’ says cult-like SPAC Nation
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