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The head organiser of London’s LGBTQ+ Pride parade could face a fine, asset seizure or even imprisonment after being accused of failing to comply with a court order to relinquish control over the organisation’s property.
Christopher Joell-Deshields, who is suspended from his role as chief executive of Pride in London after claims of impropriety including misuse of funds, has been told to appear at the high court on Tuesday to answer to an allegation of contempt of court.
London LGBT Community Pride CIC, the organisation behind the parade, obtained an injunction in September against Joell-Deshields, who is under internal investigation.
The injunction, to which Joell-Deshields agreed at a hearing, ordered him to hand over “all usernames, passwords, personal identification numbers and other information” relating to Pride’s bank accounts, social media profiles and other administrative tools.
The organisation claimed Joell-Deshields had been seeking to withhold this property in an attempt to cover up “the full extent of his actions becoming apparent to the disciplinary investigator”, according to a legal claim detailing the allegations against Joell-Deshields.
Lawyers for London LGBT Community Pride CIC now claim he failed to comply with the terms of the order made by Mrs Justice Hill.
It is claimed that the organisation has sought to persuade Joell-Deshields to comply through correspondence warning of the “serious consequences of non-compliance” but that “despite this correspondence, the respondent did not comply”.
A skeleton document drafted before the hearing notes: “The interim order contained a penal notice.” The interim order said that should Joell-Deshields disobey its terms, he “may be held to be in contempt of court and … imprisoned, fined and/or have your assets seized”.
London’s annual Pride parade is the largest LGBTQ+ event in the UK and attracts about 30,000 participants. Joell-Deshields has been chief executive since 2022.
The Guardian revealed in August last year that Joell-Deshields had been suspended over a series of allegations of bullying and impropriety, including that he had bought luxury perfumes with food and drink vouchers donated by a sponsor for use by Pride volunteers. An internal investigation into those claims has now entered its seventh month.
Lawyers for London LGBT Community Pride CIC said they had been forced to make an application for contempt of court due to Joell-Deshields’ intransigence.
They claim they also have concerns that Joell-Deshields “may be seeking to frustrate the processes of the court by refusing to acknowledge service of the application” for contempt of court although it had been done personally.
Joell-Deshields did not respond to a request for comment when approached by the Guardian.
Pride in London is financed by a £625,000, five-year grant from the London mayor as well as its own fundraising.
Concerns about governance and the conduct of the chief executive were first raised with the board by a company director in July. This was followed by a formal whistleblowing disclosure by a group of volunteer directors.
Among the allegations reported by the Guardian was the potential misuse of some of the £30,000 worth of food and drink vouchers provided by an unnamed sponsor for volunteers.
According to the volunteer directors, the sponsor’s head of ethics and compliance wrote to the legal director at Pride in London on 18 February last year saying the company’s fraud systems had detected that two accounts had used £7,125 of the vouchers on luxury items.
The items included an Apple HomePod, Apple AirPods and cologne including Creed Aventus, which has a retail price of at least £165, and Burberry Hero, which starts at £118 a bottle.
According to the whistleblowers, the sponsor advised the legal director that “the pattern and nature of the transactions strongly suggested personal – rather than organisational – benefit”. One of the two accounts flagged was that of Joell-Deshields.
At the hearing in September, Joell-Deshields’s lawyer told the court that their client’s cooperation with the order relating to handing over access codes and property was not an admission of guilt relating to any of the allegations.
