London:
An Indian-origin member of Britain's House of Lords is facing allegations of misappropriation of nearly 600,000 pounds in charity money to fund his lavish lifestyle.
Lord Bhatia, is accused of funding his own lifestyle through the money of the Ethnic Minority Foundation (EMF), which the 81-year-old businessman had helped set up in 1999 to meet the needs of Britain's minority ethnic communities, according to a BBC investigation.
The EMF raises around 1 million pounds a year, which is distributed for causes in India and the UK.
The peer was its chairman in an unpaid role until 2009 and, the charity says, later offered to take over when the chief executive left to monitor projects in India.
The charity's board of trustees claims this arrangement was never formalised, and that it was unaware of a 100,000 pound annual contract paid to a consultancy firm owned by Lord Bhatia.
Lawyers representing Bhatia said Lord Bhatia believed the charity had misled the BBC and the EMF in fact owed him more than 250,000 pounds and that legal cases are ongoing.
"He was using the charity to run his own lifestyle really, and that was wrong," Anil Bhanot, who became EMF's treasurer in 2012 and is now chairman, told the BBC.
The charity trustees confronted the peer in December 2012 over their suspicions after which he resigned.
Lord Bhatia, who sits in the cross-benches of the Upper House, was suspended from the House of Lords in 2010 over wrongly claiming 27,446 pounds of home-related expenses, which he later repaid and returned to the House in 2011.
Documents now seen by BBC's 'Newsnight' programme suggest there could be further questionable parliamentary expense claims.
It is alleged that between 2009 and 2010 Lord Bhatia submitted double claims for mileage on 138 times at a cost of 1,500 pounds to the British taxpayer.
Lord Bhatia's lawyers say that the allegations relating to his expenses are an attempt "to reopen and confuse the historical published position with the present dispute between Lord Bhatia and EMF".
The EMF has referred its case to Action Fraud, Britain's fraud and internet crime reporting centre, and to the Charity Commission, which regulates charities in England and Wales.
The Charity Commission said it could not comment in detail as the case was on-going, but could confirm that it had been meeting EMF trustees and had "issued corrective advice to ensure they improve the charity's governance, in particular its financial controls. This will help prevent future abuse".
Lord Bhatia is suing for unfair dismissal, and has launched separate proceedings against EMF to recover more than 250,000 pounds that he says he loaned to the charity.
The trustees say these were not loans, but injections of cash to cover up the scale of his own mismanagement.
Lord Bhatia was born in East Africa and educated in Tanzania and India.
He moved to the UK in 1972 and was introduced to the House of Lords by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2001 as one of the new so-called people's peers following the abolition of the hereditary system.
Lord Bhatia has so far declined to discuss the allegations because of pending court actions.