Merkaz Hatorah Limited

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Tottenham property-redevelopment charity whose financing costs dwarf its grants

Merkaz Hatorah Limited

Type Charitable company
Founded 2019-01-23 (registered)
Registration ID Registered charity 1181702; company 11468334
Headquarters London N15
Area served Israel
Key people Asher Brecher (chair)


Merkaz Hatorah Limited is a charitable company (11468334, incorporated 17 July 2018) registered on 23 January 2019; Israel is its only register area.[1] Its trustees are Asher Brecher (chair), Pinchas Deutsch and Deborah Hager, and its registered office is in London N15 (PDF p.3, 9).[2] Its objects allow any charitable purpose in the UK and overseas; its income is mainly rent from "investment properties which it is currently redeveloping" (PDF p.4). In the year to 30 September 2025 income was £237,088 (rents £217,063), expenditure £230,555 – of which "financing costs" £163,573 and grants £12,926 – and unrestricted funds £405,379 (PDF p.4, 7, 12–14).[2]

Objects and activities

The charity's registered objects read: "THE ADVANCEMENT OF THE ORTHODOX JEWISH FAITH IN PARTICULAR (BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY) BY MAKING GRANTS TO RELIGIOUS EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS WHICH FURTHER THE ADVANCEMENT OF THE ORTHODOX JEWISH FAITH:- I. BY EDUCATING CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE IN THEIR RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS AND THUS ENABLING THEM TO FULFIL THEIR RELIGIOUS DUTIES ANDII. BY PROVIDING COURSES AND OTHER TRAINING TO LEAD TO RABBINICAL DIPLOMAS, TEACHER QUALIFICATIONS AND OTHER RELIGIOUS LEADERS. AND IN PARTICULAR BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY TO THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS OF AND KNOWN AS ÆSERET VIZNITZÆ IN ISRAEL."[1]

The register describes its activities as: "The object of the charity is the advancement of the orthodox Jewish faith.The trustees confirm that they have referred to the Charity Commission's general guidance on public benefit whenreviewing the charity's aims and objectives. The charity carries out its objects by grantmaking"[1]

Register classifications: Religious Activities.[1]

Areas of operation recorded on the register: Israel.[1]

Trustees

Current trustees, with other charities on which the same register trustee ID appears:[1]

Trustees of Merkaz Hatorah Limited (register, October 2026)
Trustee Appointed Chair Other trusteeships
Asher Brecher 2018-01-29 Yes Nezer Hatalmud (1204317); Zichron Nachum (Europe) Trust (1085059)
Pinchas Deutsch 2020-11-11 —
Deborah Hager 2020-11-11 Friends of Chortkov (1115030); South Tottenham Kehila Limited (1145657)

Historical trustees (UK Government Web Archive)

Trustees shown in archived register pages
Capture date Trustees listed Source
2021-01-14 Pinchas Deutsch (from 11 November 2020); Asher Brecher (chair) (from 29 January 2018) – also trustee of Zichron Nachum (Europe) Trust; Deborah Hager (from 11 November 2020) [3]

Asher Brecher is recorded on the register as a trustee of Nezer Hatalmud (1204317) and Zichron Nachum (Europe) Trust (1085059); Deborah Hager of Friends of Chortkov (1115030) and South Tottenham Kehila Limited (1145657).[1]

Companies House officers

Companies House lists 5 current and former officers of the charitable company (11468334), 3 of them active.[4] Officers recorded as resident outside the UK: Aharon Adler (Israel, resigned); Baruch Halpern (United States, resigned).[4]

Finances

Income and expenditure, five most recent reported years
Financial year end Income Expenditure
2021-07-31 £66,673 £192,926
2022-09-30 £232,565 £208,963
2023-09-30 £204,874 £234,040
2024-09-30 £220,899 £316,539
2025-09-30 £237,088 £230,555

Source: register annual-return history.[1]

Archived accounts

Accounts no longer on the live register were found in the UK Government Web Archive:

  • Accounts for the year ended 31/07/2019[5]

Funding in Israel

  • FY2025 grants to institutions £12,926 ("Other"); the accounts name no recipients and the accounts do not mention Israel (PDF p.13).[2]

Israeli partners

Not named.[2]

Activity beyond the Green Line and support for the IDF

Findings are graded by confidence. "Partner" findings concern the Israeli recipient organisation, not proven use of UK funds.

Evidence of activity beyond the 1949 armistice line
Finding Confidence
No place is named. Not established

Support for the IDF: No IDF or military funding is stated.[2]

Controversies and regulatory action

  • No Charity Commission inquiry, Official Warning or Gazette insolvency notice naming this charity was found, and its register entry shows no regulatory alert;[6] it is not among the charities named in the Commission's cheque-cashing class-inquiry announcements (May, September and December 2025) or in the September 2026 statement of results.[7][8][9][10] The charities in the Commission's settlements class inquiry (opened August 2026) have not been named, so it is not known whether this charity is among them.[11]
  • Loans to directors' companies. Other debtors of £137,106 include "amounts due from Companies with one or more common Directors to this Company", secured and carrying rolled-up interest of 10% (PDF p.15).[2] The charity's wholly owned subsidiary Rochester Developments Limited (PDF p.17) is, at Companies House, Rochester Developments Ltd (11638532), whose sole director is Asher Brecher; CCOD lists it as proprietor of four titles in south-east London and Beckenham bought for a total recorded price of more than £1.4 million.[2][12][13]
  • Grants small relative to costs. Grants of £12,926 (2024: £49,000), shown only as "Other", compare with financing costs of £163,573 (2024: £202,571) and bank loans of £2,634,408; the report gives 2024 income of £220,899 while the statement of financial activities gives £258,128 (PDF p.4, 7, 13–15).[2]

Other registers and records

Scotland and Northern Ireland

No entry was found on the Scottish Charity Register for this charity (register export dated 14 October 2026, searched by name).[14] No entry was found on the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland register (API name searches returned zero results).[15]

The Gazette

Searches of The Gazette for the charity's name returned only Companies House filing lists; no insolvency, winding-up or strike-off notice naming the charity was found.[16]

Grants recorded by 360Giving

No grants received or made by this charity are recorded in 360Giving data.[17]

Sanctions screening

The charity's name, its current register trustees, trustees named on archived register pages, trustees and officers named in the accounts read for this profile and (for charitable companies) its Companies House officers were screened against the UK Sanctions List and the OFSI Consolidated List. No match was found. Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor (UK sanctions ID RUS1127) does not appear among this charity's trustees or officers.[18]

Land and property

The register records that the charity owns and/or leases land or property.[1] No title registers were purchased; the HM Land Registry interactive search blocked automated access.[19] Candidate titles and addresses (CCOD dataset and register/accounts data):[13]

  • Investment property £2,851,467 at 30 September 2025 at the directors' valuation, "currently redeveloping"; bank loans of £2,634,408; addresses not stated – Accounts (PDF p.4, 8, 14–15) (source: [2])
  • 309-311 Beckenham Road, Beckenham (BR3 4RL) (title SGL146729, freehold; proprietor added 04/10/2021, price paid £600,000); Higgitt House, 444 Rochester Way, London (SE9 6LJ) (title SGL377909, freehold; proprietor added 21/02/2019, price paid £735,000); 446 Rochester Way, London (SE9 6LJ) (title SGL433000, freehold; proprietor added 21/02/2019, price paid £75,000); Land at 311 Beckenham Road, Beckenham (BR3 4RL) (title SGL804816, freehold; proprietor added 04/10/2021) – 4 titles registered to Rochester Developments Ltd (11638532), named in the accounts as the charity's wholly owned subsidiary (Rochester Developments Limited); its director is the charity's chair Asher Brecher (source: [13][12])

Parliament

Hansard exact-phrase searches for "Merkaz Hatorah Limited", "Merkaz Hatorah" returned 0 contributions in total.[20]

Web archive

The UK Government Web Archive holds 2 archived Charity Commission register pages used in this profile (cited in the sections above). The 2021 archived full print showed the status "Charity reporting is up to date" and "Other regulators: No information available".[3]

See also

External links

  • No current official website.

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Charity Commission for England and Wales, Register of Charities public extract (tables charity, charity_trustee, charity_annual_return_history, charity_area_of_operation, charity_classification), extract dated 14 October 2026.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 Charity Commission, Merkaz Hatorah Limited (1181702): accounts and annual returns Register of Charities; latest accounts downloaded 15 October 2026 ("PDF p." = page of the PDF file).
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Register entry 1181702, full print (capture of 20210114) UK Government Web Archive.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Company 11468334: officers Companies House, viewed 15 October 2026.
  5. ↑ Merkaz Hatorah Limited accounts, year ended 2019-07-31 UK Government Web Archive (capture of 20200703).
  6. ↑ Charity Commission, Register of Charities, charity overview page (register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/charity-search/-/charity-details/ followed by the organisation number) for each of the 25 batch-11 charities, all retrieved successfully on 15 October 2026 and checked for a "Regulatory alerts" section; none was shown for any of them. The pages showed reporting status (for example "Charity reporting is up to date (39 days late)" for British Friends of Rambam Medical Centre, "(4 days late)" for British Friends of Aleh and "(11 days late)" for Urgent Projects).
  7. ↑ Charity Commission, Serious concerns over use of £22 million triggers investigation by charity regulator GOV.UK, 14 May 2025.
  8. ↑ Charity Commission, Regulator opens next phase of investigation into 105 charities connected to company cashing cheques GOV.UK, 1 September 2025.
  9. ↑ Charity Commission, Regulator announces next charities to be investigated as part of inquiry connected to company cashing cheques GOV.UK, 4 December 2025.
  10. ↑ Charity Commission, Regulator concludes investigation into 4 charities as class inquiry continues GOV.UK, 9 September 2026, with Statement of the results of a class inquiry (same date), both retrieved 15 October 2026.
  11. ↑ Charity Commission, Charity regulator opens inquiry into charities working in illegal Israeli settlements GOV.UK, 5 August 2026, retrieved 15 October 2026 (a fact-finding statutory class inquiry initially involving 8 charities which "are not being publicly named at this time").
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Companies House, Company 11638532 (Rochester Developments Ltd): officers Find and update company information, viewed 15 October 2026.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 HM Land Registry, UK companies that own property in England and Wales (CCOD) and Overseas companies that own property in England and Wales (OCOD) full extracts, October 2026 release, matched on charitable company numbers, registered names and the names of subsidiaries named in the accounts; title numbers listed are candidates only – no title registers were purchased.
  14. ↑ Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, Scottish Charity Register download OSCR, export dated 14 October 2026, downloaded October 2026; keyword search of the 25 batch-11 charity names found no matching Scottish registration (the only hits were unrelated names such as J R Gibb Charitable Trust and Boleskine Community Care).
  15. ↑ Charity Commission for Northern Ireland, Register of charities search API CCNI, searched 15 October 2026 (keyword searches for each of the 25 batch-11 charity names returned zero results).
  16. ↑ The Gazette: notices matching 'Merkaz Hatorah' The Gazette, searched 15 October 2026.
  17. ↑ 360Giving API: grants received by GB-CHC-1181702 360Giving, queried 15 October 2026.
  18. ↑ Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, UK Sanctions List (CSV); Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, Consolidated List of Financial Sanctions Targets (ConList.csv). Batch-11 screening covered 386 name strings: the 25 charity names, current register trustees, trustees named on archived register pages (UK Government Web Archive), Companies House officers of the charitable companies and of related companies named in the accounts (GS Property Management Services, Igerville, Housefresh, Vitalina, Rochester Developments and Delapage), and trustees, examiners, donors and grant recipients named in the accounts read for this batch; matching on surname plus forename tokens, reviewed manually. No forename-and-surname match for any person was found; the only token matches were generic words in organisation names ("Trust", "Fund", "Israel", "Republic") and surname-only coincidences (Cohen, Levy, Friedman, Green, Said); lists downloaded October 2026.
  19. ↑ HM Land Registry, Search for land and property information GOV.UK – the service returned HTTP 403 (bot protection) to automated access in October 2026; no titles were looked up or purchased. Candidate title numbers below come from the free CCOD / OCOD datasets (October 2026 release), not from paid title registers.
  20. ↑ UK Parliament, Hansard search API: contributions matching the exact phrase "Merkaz Hatorah" Hansard, queried 15 October 2026 (Spoken and Written endpoints; quoted-phrase search).
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