QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Wed 9th November 2011, 3:44pm)
The whole thing seems to be to raise money for 'mates' - the various ne'er do wells and useless people that hang around the WMF.
Further investigation, followed by a letter to the charities commission, would seem to be in order.
Chief Executive 60,000
Office Manager 25,000
Events Manager 30,000
Communications 20,000
Developer 30,000
Train the Trainers Programme 20,000
Outreach merchandise & publications 5,000
Extended Reach programme 10,000
Technical development to support cultural outreach 80,000
GLAM-Wiki Conference Autumn 2012 10,000
Outreach Events 10,000
Wikipedians in Residence 15,000
Digitization 20,000
World Wars I and II project 30,000
University outreach events 10,000
Wikipedians in Residence 10,000
[etc]
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2012_Activity_PlanI think the Charity Commission will need some persuasion to arise from their quango slumber, but one of the principles of charity trustees is that they have to be squeeky clean on financial separation from the operation, the trustees themselves simply are not allowed to financially benefit from the charity. Also, the Charity Commission do not like it when the trustees are all mates. The thing about this is that it will seem to outsiders that these people are distributed about the place.
Same with the salaries - they are reasonable salaries for those with experience, but it is a fair bet that most of their CVs simply are not up to the roles, they've just divided up the jobs between them.
What the Charities Commission need is hard evidence, and even then they are reluctant to intervene. We had forged invoices covering £20k at our local village hall where the committee had been paying themselves inflated sums - that was something like 30% of the income - and the CC were very little help, they only advised the trustees that they should not go to the police in the first instance as recovering the money was more important and I had to do some nasty behind the scenes work to ensure that the same people were stopped doing the same with the scouts.
I think other donators might be a little surprised that their money donated to Wikipedia, but actually to the WMF, has been diverted to the UK and is essentially going into the pockets of a handful of Wikipedians. I'm pretty amazed that any organisation would drop £500k to start up an organisation like that, which claims to be going to raise £1m a year where the participants are just a bunch of amateurs - and with oddballs like ChaseMe being employed, you can see that there is a major issue with the judgement of the group.
So I think CC would need a pretty well researched dossier which showed that the charity moneys were essentially being diverted into the pockets of employees selected because they were known through Wikipedia rather than selected through a proper process; that they did not have appropriate qualifications or experience (sitting being depressed in your own room for a year or two hardly is a great CV for an Events Manager) and a demonstration that an unreasonable proportion of the money was going in admin (read, own pockets) rather than to furthering the causes of the charity.
The key issue is that the trustees must have no financial benefit from the charity. The only exception is that if the charity can show that a trustee has provided the service at a demonstrably beneficial rate, e.g. if the trustee of a village hall runs a cleaning company and provides cleaning at cost as a favour.
I'd expect it to be fairly simple to find issues where they have not complied with law because these are Wikipedians, and they work on the principle of if Wikipedians believe something then that is how it must be, and actual law is a nuisance to be ignored. I'd presume that they had finance for some fairly good legal advice to get the charity but what the legal presentation was and what they actually do will be two different things. Perhaps a freedom of information request about the submissions would be appropriate. If they misrepresented the charity, then that is fraud and it becomes a police matter. It might also be worth, in that case, ensuring that you get copies of the various mailing lists and the statements made there - I'd presume that they would be naive enough to discuss what they were doing openly.
Wikipedia and Wikimedia, Where's your money going
Peter Damian Wikipedia and Wikimedia 
