Stephen Coleman is due to be sentenced in February for his crimes which cost the charity more than £400,000. He is currently being held in custody.
Now Senator Sarah Ferguson, who sat on the
board at the time of Mr Coleman’s appointment in the mid 2000s and was re-appointed in 2018, has defended the charity for not spotting Coleman’s crimes sooner.
Questions have been asked about how Coleman, a former Army major, was able to get away with fleecing the charity for more than a decade.
The JEP understands that the disgraced chief executive manipulated board minutes and lied to finance officers to give himself – and other innocent members of staff – significant pay rises and bonuses.
Detectives say the inquiry has now closed and they do not suspect that anyone else was criminally involved. It is believed by some connected to the charity that Coleman was fraudulently awarding others pay rises and bonuses to hide his own crimes.
Senator Ferguson said crimes of Coleman’s nature were often ‘very hard to spot’.
She added: ‘My old accountancy lecturer, a very wise man, once told me that sometimes these things are only spotted by accident.’
The JSPCA is not listed on the Jersey Charity Commissioner’s public registry, which was launched in 2018 to help the public have more confidence in charities. However, it does publish its audited accounts on its website.
Last year, the charity recorded a ‘small surplus’ of £72,460 – compared with a deficit of £569,138 in 2017. It was thanks to an increase in legacies of £540,417 – up from £458,203 in 2017 – and a ‘large one-off donation of £299,138’.
Asked about the level of corporate governance at the JSPCA, Senator Steve Pallett, one of the newest members of the board, said he was ‘reassured that the charity had tightened its governance procedures and the public should have confidence in the newly appointed chief executive and the committee’.
The JEP has contacted JSPCA chief executive Debra D’Orleans, who took over from interim head Kevin Keen, and president Charles Gruchy for comment. Mr Gruchy said he would comment after Coleman had been sentenced.
