The family of the NHS charities fundraiser Captain Sir Tom Moore personally benefited from the charity set up in his name through a series of lucrative deals worth more than £1m, the charities watchdog has ruled in a highly critical report.

A Charity Commission inquiry concluded the late Captain Tom’s daughter Hannah Ingram-Moore and her husband, Colin Ingram-Moore, were culpable of “serious and repeated” instances of misconduct, mismanagement and failures of integrity.

The Ingram-Moores, who set up the Captain Tom Foundation in 2020 to support good causes, repeatedly blurred their private interests with those of the charity while gaining “significant” personal benefit, the inquiry found.

Despite initially claiming they would not be involved in the foundation, the Ingram-Moores exercised high levels of control over it, the inquiry found, helped by weak oversight by trustees who were often kept in the dark by the family.

The inquiry report is especially critical of a £1.5m three-book deal signed in May 2020 on behalf of Captain Tom by Hannah Ingram-Moore, which promotional materials suggested would benefit the charity, but which turned out to be an almost purely commercial deal enriching the family.

Although the inquiry was told the Ingram-Moores had promised to make a donation to the charity from the book deal, they did not do so. Given the opportunity by the commission in November 2022 to make a donation from the book deal proceeds, they declined.

Other findings include:

• Hannah Ingram-Moore “initiated the process to secure her appointment as chief executive” of the charity, suggesting she should be paid a salary of £150,000. The charity proposed paying her £100,000 but this was blocked by the commission and she was eventually hired on £85,000.

• Hannah Ingram-Moore received £18,000 from Virgin Media in September 2021 to judge its Local Legends awards when she was chief executive of the foundation. This was unauthorised and a conflict of interest, and there was no evidence it was undertaken, as she claimed, in a personal capacity.

• The Ingram-Moores used the charity’s name inappropriately and for their private benefit in a planning application to build a private spa pool in the grounds of their family home. The building was subsequently demolished.

David Holdsworth, the chief executive of the Charity Commission, said that while Captain Tom had “inspired a nation and reminded us what service to others can achieve”, the charity set up in his name had failed to live up to that legacy.

“The public – and the law – rightly expect those involved in charities to make an unambiguous distinction between their personal interests and those of the charity and the beneficiaries they are there to serve. This did not happen in the case of the Captain Tom Foundation,” he said.

The report, which is the result of a two-year inquiry, marks a tawdry end to a story which began when Captain Tom, then aged 99, sought to raise £1,000 for charity during the pandemic by walking 100 laps of his garden in April 2020. His initiative caught the public imagination and became a global phenomenon, raising £39m for NHS charities.

In July 2024, Hannah and Colin Ingram-Moore revealed they had been disqualified as trustees by the commission and banned from holding a senior management position at any charity for 10 and eight years respectively. They claimed the disqualification order was clear they had not “misappropriated or received unauthorised payments from the charity’s funds” and they had never accessed or made any payments from the charity’s bank account.

The Captain Tom Foundation was set up by the family in June 2020 after his NHS charities fundraising, with the aim of using his name to raise money to give grants to good causes including hospices and mental health charities.

In their registration application to the Charity Commission at the time, the family confirmed the foundation would be fully independent of them and that “there were no plans for any family member to receive benefit from it”.

However, the inquiry report revealed that, even as it was applying to register the charity, the family had trademarked “Captain Tom” and set up a private company called Club Nook and a private family trust to manage Captain Tom’s intellectual property and commercial interests.

The family’s charity registration application was misleading, the report found, because it did not disclose the foundation’s close links to Club Nook, or its reliance on the goodwill of Club Nook to use Captain Tom’s name.

The family’s power over the charity through Club Nook was such that the charity’s trustees were “unable to confirm whether, for example, the charity would be permitted to sell mugs printed with the name of the charity to generate funds for the charity without first seeking the permission of Club Nook”.

The Ingram-Moores said in a statement they felt “unfairly and unjustly” treated as they accused the commission of “selective storytelling”.

“A credible regulatory body would provide the full truth, rather than misrepresenting and conflating facts and timelines that align with a predetermined agenda,” they said. “True accountability demands transparency, not selective storytelling.”

They added that the inquiry had taken a “serious toll on our family’s mental and physical health, unfairly tarnishing our name and affecting our ability to carry on Captain Sir Tom’s legacy”.

The Captain Tom Foundation is still in existence but stopped taking donations in 2023. It attracted £1.5m in donations over two years, of which £370,000 was distributed in grants. Captain Tom died in February 2021, aged 100.

A spokesperson for the foundation said it was “pleased with the Charity Commission’s unequivocal findings regarding the Ingram-Moores’ misconduct”.

The charity is “imploring the Ingram-Moores to rectify matters by returning the funds due to the foundation, so that they can be donated to well-deserving charities as intended by the late Captain Sir Tom Moore”, the spokesperson added.