The pastor of a church at the centre of a £1.87million fraud case has lost his deportation battle.
Tobi Adegboyega, cousin of Star Wars actor John Boyega, was head of the controversial SPAC Nation church, which ran inappropriate ‘safe houses’ for vulnerable black people.
The majority of its income did not go through a bank account, and the church has since been shut down after it was unable to account for nearly £2million of outgoings.
Now an immigration tribunal has ruled that Adegboyega should be deported to his native Nigeria after misuse of funds by his church was revealed.
He claimed deportation would breach his right under the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) to a family life, having married a British woman.
His lawyers also said the attempt to remove him by the Home Office failed to take account of his community work with SPAC, which ‘intervened in the lives of many hundreds of young people, predominantly from the black communities in London, to lead them away from trouble’, The Telegraph reports.
He suggested the community projects he founded would either close or reduce in size if he was forced to leave London.
But the Home Office told the court ‘all is not as it seems’, with the final judgement saying: ‘Former members of the church have alleged that it is a cult, in which impoverished young people are encouraged to do anything they can to donate money, including taking out large loans, committing benefit fraud and even selling their own blood.
‘It is alleged that the church leadership lead lavish lifestyles and there have, it is said, been instances of abuse.
‘The [case before us was that all of this needs to be taken into account when evaluating whether [Mr Adegboyega] is in fact of real value to the UK.’
Adegboyega has lived in the UK unlawfully since overstaying on a visitor’s visa in 2005. He applied for leave to remain in 2019, but his application was dismissed before he launched his appeal.
In the tribunal, he said no one had ever faced criminal charges over his church’s finances, that many of the attacks on him and SPAC Nation were politically motivated and that claims it was a cult were unfounded.
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But a Charity Commission investigation into the church concluded: ‘There had been serious misconduct and/or mismanagement in the administration of the charity which was sustained over a substantial period of time.’
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