‘Jon Wedger Foundation’ isn’t a foundation…or a charity

Jon Wedger, ex-Metropolitan Police officer and self-styled whistleblower, seems to have borrowed a page from Belinda McKenzie’s book. In 2015, Belinda’s “Knight Foundation”, founded by Belinda and named (as we later learned) for a convicted sex offender, Christopher Xavier Knight, was touted as a charity which would “help children and families”:

A bit of fancy footwork—”your donation will help meet the expenses of our volunteers”—disguised the real intention of the Knight Foundation, as it later turned out that all monies donated were being sent to Sabine McNeill, who at that time had evaded arrest and was hiding out in Germany. Further digging revealed that the so-called “charity”…was not.

This came to light thanks to the Ham&High newspaper, in a 24 July 2015 article titled “Highgate company investigated for posing as child abuse charity and sending donations to UK fugitive”. Reporter Paul Wright wrote:

An investigation by the Ham&High has discovered that a company claiming to raise money to help “protect children from sexual abuse” had been misleading potential donors as part of a drive to raise £1million.

The Knight Foundation, set up in February 2014, said the money would go towards helping fight “cruelty against children” and “Satanic ritual abuse”.

But the Ham&High has discovered that the organisation is not registered with the government watchdog the Charity Commission and that almost all the donations received are being sent to Sabine McNeill – a fugitive wanted for questioning by UK police.

Her colleague Belinda McKenzie, one of the directors of The Knight Foundation, has been leading the donation drive from her home in Priory Gardens, Highgate.

The 69-year-old told the Ham&High: “We are aiming to become a charity and are at the early stages of the organisation.

“I see our work as charitable as it’s helping others, including my friend Sabine who had to leave the UK or face arrest. She needs financial support for her work, speaking to MEPs about child abuse in the UK. But I will consider amending the wording on our website.”

It turns out that “seeing our work as charitable” is really not the same thing as “the Knight Foundation is a charitable foundation”, who knew?

‘Jon Wedger Foundation’

Jon Wedger, who has at least a passing acquaintance with Belinda (she was one of very few people un-ironically sporting an “I stand with Jon Wedger” t-shirt during Sabine’s trial), is now advertising a “foundation” of his very own.

The Jon Wedger Foundation website is not shy about asking for cash: the Donate button is very large and prominently placed, and leads to a JustGiving page which states, “We’re raising £5,000 to expose an establishment cover up of child abuse”.

Wedger poses in Sussex Gardens, where he falsely claims police covered up child trafficking.

And while the Foundation does claim to have donated money to one organisation which arguably assists children—£2,000 to the Swinton Lock Activity Centre—the blurb on the website dwells mainly upon the high cost of promoting Wedger via social media:

Jon Wedger is a former Scotland Yard detective campaigning to expose an establishment cover up of child abuse.

He has travelled around the UK and Europe, talking to victims and survivors of child abuse and whistle-blowers from a wide range of professional industries. Working hard to put pressure on the government and mainstream media to hold power to account and put CHILDREN FIRST.

And the good news is, the message is getting out, with 89,000 unique video views every month and 650,000 post views to his Facebook page.

A lot of this has come from paid boosting on Facebook which has cost £3k so far. But if we can raise more, then more will be made aware. Every penny will be spent on gathering testimonies and advertising them to as many people as possible.

For example, for £800 we can reach 600,000 people in 24 hours.

But the page is becoming a full time job. So we are also raising money for admin support. On average we have 5 messages a day, which need time to respond to.

So the Swinton Lock Activity Centre gets £2,000, while Facebook has received £3,000 “so far”. How abused children will benefit from a Facebook ad campaign is not really clear.

If this were not raising enough red flags, the Jon Wedger Foundation is not registered with the Charity Commission; and unlike the former Knight Foundation, it is not even registered with Companies House.

It is our understanding that in order for an organisation to legitimately call itself a “Foundation”, certain conditions must be met.

For starters, according to Companies House’s document which provides guidance on incorporation and names, companies may not simply adopt the term “foundation” as part of their title, and call it a day. The proposed foundation must be a limited company, and must apply to the Secretary of State for special designation:

To use this word in your proposed name the company should be limited by guarantee. The company or business should have a pool of money or a regular source of finance available to promote its objects.

However, this is a moot point at present, since the Jon Wedger Foundation is not registered with Companies House—meaning that it is not even on its way to becoming a foundation, as Belinda claimed the Knight Foundation was.

The ‘Jon Wedger Foundation’ is, in real terms, nothing at all.

Unfortunately, at present we have no way to ask Wedger about this troubling circumstance, since he quickly blocks anybody who questions him about anything.

However, we would advise anybody who might be contemplating a donation to Wedger’s non-foundation to think very carefully about whether they really want to give money to something that is essentially nothing more than a personal publicity campaign.