An Islamic orphans’ fund was stripped of charity status as auditors comb the accounts of Australia’s peak Muslim group.
The Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission (ACNC) has booted the Islamic Development Organisation, known as I-DO, off its official register so it can no longer claim tax breaks.
The ACNC will also audit the powerful Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC) — which controls six Muslim schools and administers the lucrative halal certification scheme for Islam-approved food.
The ACNC said it was concerned that AFIC “may not have been operating as a not-for-profit entity”.
The federal government threatened to axe $41 million in education grants to AFIC-controlled schools this year after a Deloitte audit found taxpayer funds had been funnelled into AFIC.
The biggest — Malek Fahd Islamic School in Sydney — was stripped of $20 million in funding but is appealing the decision.
Funding was reinstated to schools in Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide after they agreed to “ensuring appropriate independence” from AFIC, which still lists them on its website.
AFIC’s most recent financial report shows it charged the schools $4.1m in rent plus $223,945 in administration fees and $240,000 in accounting fees last year. The Muslim charity also pocketed $794,263 in halal certification fees and $126,446 in “supervision fees” to ensure animals are slaughtered facing Mecca.
AFIC’s new president Keysar Trad, who once worked for the Tax Office, said AFIC was co-operating with the charity regulator to fix issues of “poor governance”.
“We’re cleaning up everything,” he said. “We want to make sure the federation is one of the cleanest and most transparent organisations in Australia.”
The Sydney-based I-DO, which was registered as a charity in 2012, invited people to sponsor an orphan for $4 a day and to donate money for education and safe drinking water for orphans in Somalia.
Its most recent financial report, from 2014, states that it operated in NSW and Turkey.
I-DO’s executive director Ismail Kirsten told The Daily Telegraph he had not been told its charity status had been revoked.
Secrecy laws stop the ACNC giving reasons for the revocation but a spokesman said it was the most serious enforcement action.