Chabad Lubavitch UK welcomes the Charity Commission’s announcement of a class statutory inquiry into eight charities sharing common trustees and which have been implicated in a recent money laundering case.

Chabad Lubavitch UK is entirely unrelated in any way whatsoever to Chabad UK, one of the charities now under investigation.

The fact that Chabad UK (registered with charity number 1118547) bears such a similar name to Chabad Lubavitch UK and other registered Chabad charities, but is totally unrelated in any way to them, has been a cause of concern, confusion and reputational damage for many years. Chabad UK is also totally unrelated to the worldwide Chabad Lubavitch movement.

We call upon the Charity Commission to consider much more carefully the adoption of charity names by organisations unconnected with existing charities to reduce the chances of confusion or even fraudulent misrepresentation, in order to protect the public and the reputation of the charity sector and law-abiding charities.

We will be writing to the Charity Commission to voice our concerns.