Model sacked for revealing £300,000 'theft' from jail charity

A prison counsellor was unfairly dismissed by a charity after blowing the whistle on the alleged theft of £300,000 of public funds, a tribunal has ruled.

Robina Husain-Naviatti, 38, who now works as a photographic artist and model, was awarded £47,580 in compensation and the Charity Commission is now set to probe her claims of embezzlement.

She was deputy director of Forensic Therapies, a London-based charity providing counselling services in jails. Miss Husain-Naviatti, a trained psychotherapist and mediator who is also a model, visited inmates at Holloway, Pentonville and Wandsworth prisons.

In 2008, she alerted trustees that a £535,000 Cabinet Office grant had been recorded as £240,000 in a business plan. The charity's director Steve Morris had allegedly previously falsified cheques, the tribunal heard.

She also alleged that the Cabinet Office and another charity had each unwittingly funded her £35,000 salary - with one of the sums being siphoned off. And she claimed that Mr Morris's salary was also being paid several times over by different funding bodies.

But after blowing the whistle on a string of alleged financial discrepancies, Miss Husain-Naviatti was suspended and then made redundant.

A panel at the Watford Employment Tribunal found she was unfairly dismissed. The tribunal ruled that the real reason for her suspension and dismissal were the allegations of financial impropriety.

It awarded her payout for lost earnings and injury to feelings and recommended that the Charity Commission mount a full investigation of her claims.

Miss Husain-Naviatti, a law graduate of Jesus College, Oxford, who lives in Westminster, said: "I was victimised, harassed and ultimately lost my livelihood for daring to raise serious concerns about the potential misuse of public funds with no benefit to myself.

"The circumstances in which my dismissal happened together with the events preceding it, have had a profound effect on my state of emotional and physical health. I have suffered severe depression.

"I feel that this judgment goes some way to achieving justice and I hope that the Charity Commission takes heed of the tribunal's comments about investigating this further."

Her solicitor Shah Qureshi, of law firm Bindmans, said: "Whistleblowers who dare to raise their heads above the parapet are a vital check against complacency and cover-ups and the law recognises they need protection."

Miss Husain-Naviatti faces a fight to get her compensation after the trustees of Forensic Therapies put it into liquidation shortly before the case began.