Collapsed charity 'had debts of up to £4m'

AN Edinburgh charity which was wound up last week had run up debts of up to £4 million, it was reported today.

Three Fringe venues - the Roxy, the Forest and the GRV - are all being put up for sale in the wake of the demise of Edinburgh University Settlement (EUS).

It has also emerged that former Hibs chairman David Duff, who was jailed for two years for fraud in 1993, had been acting as an adviser to the charity, which collapsed last week with the loss of 40 jobs, it was reported today.

Scotland's charity regulator is thought to have been investigating the affairs of the social outreach charity.

EUS, which has not had any links to the university for some time, hired Mr Duff as a "business development consultant", according to its website. It emerged EUS was spending about 300,000 more annually than it earned in recent years.

Bruce Cartwright, of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the firm handling EUS's affairs, said: "The charity's income has fallen way short of what it was spending in recent years."