This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A multimillionaire has left a substantial sum of money to Oxfam after dying alongside his family in a plane crash, just months after the scandal-hit charity said it would have to cut jobs and aid programmes because of reduced funding.

Catering boss Richard Cousins was killed on New Year’s Eve with his fiancee, her daughter, and his two sons while on holiday in Australia. According to the Sun, his will specified that £41m of his money should go to the charity in the unlikely event that he and his sons died together.

Cousins, who was 58, was chief executive of Compass Group.

He died alongside his fiancee, magazine editor Emma Bowden, 48, her 11-year-old daughter, Heather, his sons, Edward, 23, and William, 25, and Australian pilot Gareth Morgan. Their seaplane, which belonged to a firm running sightseeing tours, plunged into the Hawkesbury river near Cowan, 30 miles north of Sydney.

An inquest in the UK called it a “tragic accident” and found the family died from a combination of multiple injuries and drowning.

It was reported that a year before the crash, Cousins had added a “common tragedy clause” to his will. This means that all but £3m of his fortune will go to Oxfam, while his brothers, Simon and Andrew, will each receive £1m.

Oxfam has faced financial difficulty in the wake of allegations that its staff used sex workers during a relief mission in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

It recently warned it would have to axe jobs and aid programmes to urgently find £16m in savings following the fallout from the scandal.

An internal document circulated in June by the chief executive, Mark Goldring, said the charity would “have to save substantial amounts of money to put [us] on a more stable and sustainable footing”. It said job losses were “inevitable”, and selling off high-street shops and reducing the number of countries in which Oxfam operates were both proposals under consideration.

Oxfam GB, which is at the heart of the charity’s work, employing about 2,000 staff in the UK, has struggled to win back the confidence of the public.

It stands accused of having failed to disclose details of the alleged sexual misconduct by its staff to the Charity Commission, which launched an inquiry earlier this year.

Goldring told the inquiry the charity has lost 7,000 regular donors since the revelations. Haiti has banned Oxfam from operating in the country, and in February the charity withdraw from bidding for any new UK government funding. Funding from the Department for International Development (DfID) continues under higher scrutiny.

A spokesman for Oxfam said on Tuesday: “We are extremely grateful for this bequest of which we have only recently been notified.

“We are working with the family and our board of trustees to identify how the money will be used.”