Claims of seven-year-old raped in Myanmar, ‘squandered’ sources and bloated salaries for bosses… contained in the Oxfam cash pit and the explosive row threatening its future

Perhaps the most important five words on Oxfam’s website are: ‘We make every penny count.’ 

The promise to the public is accompanied by photographs and information explaining how this pledge is being honoured in conflict zones and disaster spots in every corner of the globe: Gaza, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine… the list of countries receiving humanitarian aid with your money currently stands at more than 70.’

Volunteers wearing instantly recognisable green Oxfam T-shirts and vests have become a familiar sight on TV news coverage.

But is Oxfam really making every penny count?

Not according to two explosive documents which call for the removal of the charity’s entire board and the opening of a statutory inquiry into the organisation.

One is the 45-page claim for constructive dismissal from former chief executive Dr Halima Begum; the other is the five-page resignation letter of trustee Dr Balwant Singh, both of which have been leaked to the Daily Mail.

‘The Oxfam board are entirely unfit to govern what should be a national treasure,’ Dr Begum declared in her claim, which has just been lodged at Reading employment tribunal.

It would be hard to think of a more damaging charge to make against one of the world’s best known charities – from the woman who, until recently, used to run it – and a man who helped oversee it.

Oxfam is accused of wasting ‘hard-earned public charitable donations’ on PR advisers and lawyers and of suspected fraud at Oxfam’s Nairobi-based international secretariat where many such ‘donations’ end up.

Donations, in other words, from well-meaning people all over Britain may have been squandered.

Both Dr Begum and Dr Singh highlight systemic safeguarding failures as late as 2024 despite a fortune being spent on governance in the wake of the Haiti scandal – when 2010 earthquake victims on the Caribbean island were sexually exploited by Oxfam aid workers – which was covered up and only came to light in 2018.

An Oxfam volunteer was being investigated for raping a seven-year-old in Myanmar last year, Dr Begum reveals, something which has not been made public until now. We have not been able to find out further details about the incident.

The fresh allegations follow weeks of damaging headlines about in-fighting at the charity and persistent criticisms that the noblest of mission statements to alleviate global poverty has been corrupted by woke activism.

The complaints – that Oxfam is effectively betraying the people on whose generosity it depends – comes at a time when an estimated four million fewer people in the country are donating to charity compared to the pre-Covid period.

Squeezed household budgets are one of the main reasons for the drop-off, but damaging revelations in the sector like that of the Captain Tom debacle – his family benefited personally from the foundation set up in his name during Covid – have undoubtedly dented public trust in ‘philanthropic’ causes. 

Oxfam’s accounts for 2024/25 show a second consecutive annual operating deficit of more than £20million after income dropped by £28.6million.

So the crisis at the organisation, which has a network of more than 500 shops in the UK and employs around 4,000 staff, could not be more unwelcome at the moment.

The departures of Dr Begum and Dr Singh come in the wake of a breakdown in relations between Begum, the now former chief executive, and the outfit’s chairman Charles Gurassa.

Dr Begum, a former official at the Department for International Development (now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office), stood down in December after nearly two years in the post, amid allegations of bullying staff during a bruising restructuring programme to reduce costs.

The accusations were described as ‘absurd’ by her allies within the charity. Gurassa, chair of the Guardian Media Group, had resigned the previous month after Dr Begum filed a grievance complaint against him, which a spokesman for him described as ‘completely spurious’.

What happened during this bloodletting is symptomatic of the wider culture at Oxfam and illustrates that, contrary to its unofficial motto, it is claimed every penny doesn’t count.

One example was the decision to hire Howlett Bowden, a ‘people intelligence company’ specialising in employees, to examine concerns around Dr Begum’s leadership.

Some background on Howlett Bowden: in 2021, it was commissioned to conduct a temperature check of Amnesty International at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and found that the organisation’s secretariat was a ‘bastion of white privilege’.

Many will ask why Oxfam needed to employ such a firm – based in the City of London and charging tens of thousands of pounds – to investigate its CEO.

It was not the only example of what Dr Singh in particular, called the ‘squandering of invaluable resources’.

At the same time, strategic communications company The Blakeney Group was engaged to advise on Oxfam’s media strategy including managing Dr Begum’s departure after the review identified ‘serious issues’ in her ‘leadership behaviour’.

Blakeney boasts a ‘track record advising prime ministers, politicians, global media brands and leading businesses’ with a number of high-profile Labour Party figures on its team.

Again, many will ask why Oxfam needed London PR specialists when the charity has its own internal communications team.

The reason, says Dr Singh, 63 – who, for the past 30 years, has led philanthropic, development and humanitarian organisations all over the world, which included holding a senior position at Save The Children – is the charity feared that, if Begum spoke out, ‘a significant proportion of the British public would be likely to support her’ because he believes she was made a scapegoat for previous board failings.

So there was an attempt to ‘shape the narrative’ by confirming her departure in a Press statement before she had been officially notified of the detailed findings of the Howlett Bowden review.

It was thought this would be better handled externally, regardless of the cost.

Not for the first time, it leaves Oxfam open to accusations that it is more concerned with reputational risk than doing the right thing and is prepared to spend your money to protect itself.

There is one other thing to mention here. Oxfam has an HR department, yet, in an all too familiar modus operandi, it felt it necessary to recruit independent HR consultant Janet Campbell to examine Dr Begum’s complaint against Gurassa.

The result of the inquiry (Dr Begum claimed her voice was being ‘continually sidelined’ by the chairman) is not known, but Gurassa, 70, who was due to remain for another year after his term was extended, decided to stand down during the investigation.

What a costly shambles.

The named companies are only the ones we know about. How many others might there betrustee Dr Balwant Singhtrustee Dr Balwant Singh?

‘I am angry that Oxfam has spent so much time and money on lawyers, PR advisers and external reviews, instead of on Sudan and East Africa which are experiencing the worst hunger crisis in living memory,’ wrote Dr Singh, a view surely shared by everyone.

There could also be another big bill to come. Dr Begum is now seeking £500,000 for ‘lost earnings, injury to feelings and aggravated and exemplary damages’ for what she describes as a ‘witch hunt’ against her.

Oxfam has form, in the eyes of its critics, for wasting money which pre-dates Dr Begum’s appointment.

In 2023, the charity published a 92-page Inclusive Language Guide describing English as the ‘language of a colonising nation’ (on the banned list was ‘headquarters’, for example, because ‘it implies a power dynamic that prioritises one office over another’) and words such as ‘mother’ and ‘father’ should also be avoided because they ascribed ‘gendered roles’.

The previous year, Oxfam faced a backlash for a video which appeared to depict JK Rowling, who holds strong gender-critical views, as an ‘evil’ transphobe with demonic red eyes. As one commentator pointed out at the time: ‘What on earth, you might think, has this got to do with those starving in Somalia?’

The shortcomings in Oxfam are commonplace in many of the biggest charities and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), corporations in all but name, which have become less transparent and consequently less accountable.

Few people outside the voluntary sector will probably be aware that the international secretariat of Oxfam was quietly moved from Oxford, where it was founded in 1942, to Nairobi in Kenya in 2017. It was a controversial move considering Kenya is known for its corruption.

In the year to March 2025, Oxfam GB made nine grants totalling £8.5million – your donations and taxpayer-funded government grants, remember – to the Nairobi office which comes under the jurisdiction of the Kenyan foreign ministry, not the Charity Commission

In the summer of that same year an ‘utterly scathing’ (Dr Begum’s words) independent auditors report raised ‘serious red flags’ (again Dr Begum’s words) about the Nairobi operation.

At least ‘seven international managers’, she says, were paid salaries which exceeded the highest-paid executives in Oxfam GB. In 2023/24, three of them, for example, earned between £150,000 and £159,000; and they presumably take home even more today. To put this in context, as chief executive Dr Begum was earning £135,799 when she left just before Christmas, a salary which in itself the auditors regarded as an issue.

‘Oxfam GB contributes millions of pounds to Oxfam international each year – money that is generously donated by the British public,’ Dr Begum said.

‘Despite the far lower cost of living in Kenya, those inflated Oxfam International salaries exceeded the renumeration of any single Oxfam GB member.’

Finally, Dr Begum and Dr Singh expose possibly the most alarming revelation of all.

The charity has spent millions on governance since senior Oxfam aid workers were discovered in 2018 to have indulged in ‘full-on Caligula orgies’ – described as ‘young meat barbecues’ – with earthquake victims in Haiti.

When she joined Oxfam in April 2024, Dr Begum says she inherited a ‘poorly managed’ organisation and a safeguarding ‘crisis’ including ‘serious failings around vetting and referencing of staff and volunteers’.

Reportedly, around 45 per cent of some 600 new employees and volunteers in Britain alone between 2022 and 2024 did not have references and Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks properly completed. A similar story, it is believed, emerged in recruitment processes in many of the countries where Oxfam works.

The Charity Commission could not confirm the above details but said vetting failures had been identified [by Dr Begum].

‘We issued the trustees with formal regulatory guidance, and made clear our criticism of the charity for these lapses,’ a commission spokesperson said. ‘We will not hesitate to take further action should wider concerns arise.’

Dr Begum makes a further astonishing allegation against Oxfam regarding the previously mentioned allegation that one of the charity’s volunteers had raped a seven-year-old girl in Myanmar.

But she was criticised, she says, for working all hours including weekends [rather than delegating] after the ‘deeply traumatising and entirely unforgivable’ alleged rape.

This is the only reference to this incident. We were unable to find out more information about what happened and Oxfam said it did not comment on individual cases.

An Oxfam spokesman said Dr Begum’s claims are ‘strongly disputed’ and that it is ‘disappointing’ Dr Singh is now publicly questioning a resolution [to remove Dr Begum] made by the board he was a member of.

The charity stressed that most legal work it required in the matter was provided pro bono and ‘has not led to a reduction in the amount of money going on our humanitarian and other international work, which remains at the centre of our mission’.

It said in the last financial year, Oxfam GB’s contribution to the international secretariat was less than 1 per cent of Oxfam GB income [£339.4million in 2024/25] and the ‘vast majority of funds raised by Oxfam affiliates’ is spent directly on Oxfam’s programmes.

Oxfam also pointed out that ‘our own internal processes’ [in an audit instigated by Dr Begum] identified inconsistencies in referencing practices and background checks and is ‘confident no one was recruited that should not have been’.

In light of the most recent crisis, however – which has left Oxfam without a chief executive and a chair, and facing a long list of uncomfortable questions – Dr Singh has urged the public not to support the charity.

Instead, he urges, give ‘directly to community organisations which… know how to bring about real and sustainable impact with far fewer resources than are squandered every year by the big NGOs’.

Organisations, in other words, that really do make every penny count.