A Black Lives Matter (BLM) activist who stole £30,000 from an online fundraising page and spent it on “lifestyle expenses” has been jailed for two-and-a-half years for fraud.
Xahra Saleem, 23, pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud in relation to a charitable company called Changing Your Mindset, which was set up in 2020 at the height of the BLM movement, and was sentenced at Bristol Crown Court on Tuesday.
Sentencing Saleem, Judge Michael Longman told her: “You abused your position as the director of a company, Changing Your Mindset, and that offence was committed over a period of time. As an organiser of the Black Lives Matter march in Bristol, you gave yourself a high public profile which you used to raise money to help young people in St. Paul’s, an immensely worthwhile cause.”
He said, “That money you then used for your benefit not theirs, funding a lifestyle which you could not normally afford.”
The court heard that over a 15-month period Saleem siphoned money out of the Changing Your Mindset account, and made 2,512 payments totalling £44,815 from her bank accounts, mainly on “lifestyle expenses.”
Prosecutor Alistair Haggerty said: “These were not big purchases. There was some money spent on shopping and bills, a new iPhone and iMac, but it was mainly on hair, beauty, clothes, Amazon purchases, taxis, and takeaways.”
‘I’ve Done Something Horrendous’
The court heard that police found a series of incriminating WhatsApp messages on her phone after her arrest.In one she told a friend: “I’ve done something horrendous. You can’t tell anyone until I’ve sorted it out. I get really really bad psychosis which I have mentioned to psychiatrists. This charity asked me to hold money for them, God knows why. Let’s just say my brain spent it. I couldn’t tell you on what, where or why. I don’t know what I spent it on.”
The BLM movement burgeoned globally following the death of George Floyd in the United States in May 2020 and in Bristol it culminated on June 7, 2020 when the Colston statue was pulled off its mounting and thrown into the harbour.
Saleem was one of the organisers of the June 7 protest and later set up a crowdfunding page to raise money for masks and other equipment to help facilitate the march, which was taking place in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was agreed that any excess funds from the online fundraising would go to a charitable company, Changing Your Mindset Ltd.
The fundraising page raised tens of thousands of pounds but none of it ever reached Changing Your Mindset.
Saleem also set up another online page that was supposed to raise money to pay the legal costs of BLM activists who had been charged, but those funds also went missing.
Her barrister, Tom Edwards, said his client had been diagnosed at a young age with depression and anxiety and after moving to Bristol from London her life, “went off the rails.”
He said: “She was taking drugs, drinking alcohol to excess, and leading a life that she’s not led either before or since, and it was clearly a time of aberration. Clearly the effect of living a lifestyle which involved drinking and drugs would have had an impact on the clarity of her judgement.”
During his mitigation speech, Mr. Edwards said, “Things like the taxis and the Uber Eats receipts, this was during the pandemic when there was limited public transport and limited catering facilities.”
He added: “It is worth bearing in mind that the time that trust and responsibility and how it was placed with Ms. Saleem, she was only just 20 and when entrusted with a large amount of money that was far more than what had been expected. She had bitten off far more than she could chew.”
