A Dundee sports club has been left more than £1000 out of pocket after a deal to buy a boxing training ring went sour.
Lochee Boys’ Boxing Club, based in Eastwell Road, appears to be one of a string of organisations across the UK to have paid money for boxing equipment or minibuses to an organisation called NTF based in Belfast but received nothing in return.
The Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action said that NTF ceased trading on August 5, owing at least £80,000 to clients and suppliers. It has received reports from 15 community bodies and sports clubs that they had paid substantial sums for equipment or vehicles which were not delivered.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said it was investigating to see if a crime has been committed.
Gordon Burns, a committee member of Lochee Boys’ Club, said he and his colleagues were “totally gutted” by the loss of the money, which was part of a £5000 grant from the Dundee Partnership.
He said the club had received a brochure from NTF, which branded itself as a not-for-profit social enterprise. It was offering a training ring for well under the commercial price and the club decided to put in an order.
Mr Burns said NTF had seemed “very professional” and had even put them in touch with another club which had received a ring. He said that now seemed to be “a sprat to catch a mackerel.”
He went on, “We then discovered that its website had closed down. We were hoping to have the ring in place for the start of the season. We can ill afford losing money like this.
“We reported it to Tayside Police but there may not be much they can do.”
Mr Burns believes clubs in other parts of Scotland had also paid sums to NTF but received nothing.
“I spoke to a solicitor in Belfast who is dealing with this and he said he had been inundated with calls,” he added.
NTF’s website is no longer working and it is understood the organisation was evicted from its offices in Belfast shortly before it went out of business.
However, an archived version of the website can still be found online. In this, NTF founder Mark Townley claims to have invested more than £70,000 of his own money into the organisation.
He said he was driven by “the passion for the work we do and the tangible impact we have on young people and the communities they live in.”
He adds “the only thing that keeps us awake at night is funding delays, false dates and uncertainty.”
The website said NTF aimed to “create, support and fund a wide variety of youth projects across the UK,” and to “fund equipment to an increasing number of community projects, mostly amateur boxing.”
The Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA) recently advised community groups and sports clubs in its area not to pay money to Mr Townley or NTF.
It said it was aware of a number of groups that had handed over money, as much as £4800, to buy minibuses but it appeared the vehicles had not been ordered from the suppliers.
NICVA spoke to Mr Townley to find out how the minibus scheme was financed and operated, but it was not satisfied with the answers it received. It also learned that NTF’s accounts were overdue at Companies House.
Mr Townley was asked to refund organisations that had paid deposits, but NICVA said that as far as it was aware no such payments have been made to date.
In a statement it said, “NICVA also became aware of a number of other businesses and charities who were owed large amounts of money by NTF, and uncovered a pattern of unfulfilled promises to meet financial commitments.
“Soon organisations across the UK were contacting NICVA to disclose that they had paid NTF thousands of pounds either as part of the minibus scheme or a similar boxing ring initiative that required as much as £1650 up front.”
It said NTF was appointing insolvency lawyers and “it will be a duty of those lawyers when appointed to report on any instances of suspected fraud by directors or employees of NTF.”
Telephone calls by The Courier to the Belfast number listed for NTF went unanswered.