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A Foreign Office-funded infowars unit exposed by the Sunday Mail is facing calls to close after a damning watchdog investigation.

We revealed last year that the Institute for Statecraft’s Integrity Initiative – a registered Scottish charity based in a dilapidated mill in Fife – had launched a series of social media attacks on Jeremy Corbyn.

The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) launched a probe in the wake of our story and last week released a damning review that found the Initiative did not provide public benefit.

It ruled its trustees had failed to provide effective oversight of its Twitter account, resulting in severe damage to its reputation and that the charity had not met its purpose of advancing education.

OSCR was also scathing of high salaries paid to charity trustees, along with the organisation’s “poor” and sometimes “non-existent” record keeping.

The watchdog stopped short of removing the Institute from the Scottish Charity Register after it said its involvement with the Integrity Initiative had been terminated.

All content has now been removed from its website, but the Integrity Initiative Twitter handle remains active.

(Image: Sunday Mail)

In the wake of the OSCR report, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said: “Conservative ministers have very serious questions to answer on the possible abuse of public money for political purposes.”

MSP Neil Findlay meanwhile has called for the Integrity Initiative to be closed down completely.

He said: “This report by OSCR is damning – there are still very serious questions to be answered about this dodgy organisation.

“Who is now running it? What role does it play in trying to influence domestic and international politics? What did Tory ministers know about this organisation?

“And given that Cabinet Minister Alan Duncan’s claims in Parliament that there was nothing to see here have been contradicted by OSCR, the Government have serious questions to answer.

“It is my view that this sham charity should be closed down.”

One post from the Integrity Initiative’s official account quotes a newspaper article calling Corbyn a “useful idiot” and went on to state: “His open, visceral anti-Westernism helped the Kremlin cause as surely as if he had been secretly peddling Westminster tittle-tattle for money.”

Another promoted an article that said: “Corbyn does not scream conspiracy, he implies it”, while yet another added: “It’s time for the Corbyn left to confront its Putin problem.”

Hacked documents revealed the organisation specified money for its social media operation in an FCO funding application.

The leaks also showed the Integrity Initiative orchestrating an online campaign in a bid to stop a Spanish army reserve colonel from being appointed as the country’s National Security Director.

The Institute’s co-founder Christopher Donnelly, an honorary colonel in military intelligence who once headed the British Army’s Soviet Studies Research Centre at Sandhurst, was forced to apologise to Corbyn earlier this year.

But David Miller, a professor of political sociology in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol, also believes further questions must be answered.

He said: “The OSCR report is extraordinary for the sheer number of criticisms made of the Institute.

(Image: Getty Images)

“Trustees trousered cash for personal advantage, its charitable objects were not charitable, its work on disinformation was partisan and not a charitable purpose, there was no public benefit and trustees failed in their duty of care and oversight.

“In retrospect, the whole project seems like it was little more than a front for a secretive military intelligence grouping. A sort of UK troll farm.

“The Foreign Office needs to explain statements made by former Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan to the House of Commons in which he blamed automatic retweeting and insisted that no public funding had been used for domestic activity. The question raised is: did the minister, whether inadvertently or not, mislead the House?

“The Sunday Mail is to be commended for significant public interest reporting on this issue, especially in the context of a wider failure in the press and broadcasting.” There were unconfirmed reports Russia is behind the hack that led to the Integrity Initiative’s internal documents being published online.

A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokesperson said: “We expect any charity which receives an FCO grant to comply with charity law and guidance.”

The Institute for Statecraft’s website, said: “The Trustees and staff of the Institute are grateful to the OSCR for bringing this inquiry to a conclusion and would like to express their appreciation for the OSCR’s highly professional, approach in their conduct of the inquiry. We acknowledge the need to improve further in those areas of governance highlighted in the report.”

(Image: Stuart Vance)

All other content has been removed.

OSCR said: “During the course of our inquiry we found that the charity was not meeting the legal tests required for charitable status in Scotland because its purposes were not entirely charitable.

"One of its most significant activities, a project known as the Integrity Initiative, did not provide public benefit in furtherance of the charity’s purposes.

“Private benefit to charity trustees was not clearly incidental to the charity’s provision of benefit to the public.

“We also found that the charity trustees had breached their trustee duties to act with care and diligence in the interest of the charity.

“In the light of the actions taken by the charity trustees, we do not consider formal action by OSCR to be necessary or proportionate. However, we will continue to monitor the charity’s activities and governance.”