The daughter of Captain Sir Tom Moore has said the decision to set up a charity in his name has all but “completely derailed our lives”.
Hannah Ingram-Moore told the BBC she has the “deepest regret” over setting up the Captain Tom Foundation.
Capt Sir Tom raised £38.9m for NHS charities after walking up and down his driveway during the first Covid-19 lockdown.
The 100-year-old Second World War veteran died on 2 February 2021 of coronavirus.
After Capt Sir Tom’s death, Ms Ingram-Moore and her husband, Colin, became trustees of the Captain Tom Foundation.
A two-year investigation by the Charity Commission found the couple “misled” the public by benefitting personally from the charity.
It found that they refused to donate any of the £1.47m received for three Capt Sir Tom books, despite assurances that part of the earnings would be passed to the charity.
The regulator also took issue with an £18,000 awards ceremony appearance fee, deals with Virgin Media and criticised the couple for not consulting trustees about a spa complex built at their home.
The Commission concluded the mismanagement was “not an isolated incident but a repeated pattern of behaviour”.
In an interview with the BBC following the inquiry, Ms Ingram-Moore said: “It didn’t need to be set up as a charity, we could have continued that legacy without it, because what it’s done is all but completely derailed our lives.
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“It was set up with my father’s name and that is our deepest regret.”
Ms Ingram-Moore, a former business consultant, is due to write three books which she says are about grief, loneliness and resilience.
Speaking to BBC Three Counties Radio’s Justin Dealey, she disputed the report’s findings but said it would have taken too much time and money to disprove it.
“We gracefully bowed out and said we’ll have to accept what they say, even though we know it not to be true and get on with our lives,” she said.
She insisted that there is “nothing dishonest” about what happened, saying that Capt Sir Tom wanted the family to “benefit” from the charity.
“He wanted to ensure that we lived well, that we had future income, because he could see that Covid had been quite devastating to our business,” she said.
The book publisher Penguin and promoter Carver PR said the family gave assurances that part of the book deal advance would be used to set up and fund the foundation.
Ms Ingram-Moore said that after fees were taken into account, the family received £800,000 from the book deal, which was mostly spent on legal costs.
She said some of the money went to charity but refused to say how much.
“I’m sorry they feel misled, I genuinely am, but there was never any intent to mislead,” she said. “If there was any misleading it wasn’t our doing.”
In June 2022, government watchdog the Charity Commission announced that it had launched an inquiry into the charity following concerns that the family may have profited from using his name.
Since then, Mr and Ms Ingram-Moore have been sacked as trustees of the charity and barred from roles in any other charities for eight and 10 years respectively.
Following the Charity Commission report in November into the foundation, the remaining trustee said he was “imploring the Ingram-Moores to rectify matters by returning the funds due” so they could be donated “to well-deserving charities as intended by the late Captain Sir Tom Moore”.
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