Mouth and Foot Painting Artists - beware!!

I am posting to this forum because I have just received some Christmas cards and a calendar from Mouth and Foot painters, with an invitation to pay for them. For the past few years I have been paying them the amount demanded. However, I never liked this aggressive marketing method, and the amount requested goes up each year. With a little niggle at the back of my brain, I decided to have a look on the Internet and found this forum.

I, too, had assumed that Mouth and Foot Painting Artists was a charity. Thanks to this forum, I discovered that it was a commercial company, and I decided to look further. This is what I found:

1. All pages of the organisation's UK website at refer to "The Mouth and Foot Painting Artists" and only on the Terms and Conditions page does it explain that "MFPA's Online Shop is a department of MFPA Publishing Limited and is a trading company of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists". I obtained the Annual Return of MFPA Publishing Limited, a UK registered company which describes its business as "Printing not elsewhere classified", and a copy of its latest accounts from Companies House. These showed the following:

- MFPA Publishing Limited files its accounts as a small company, which means that only basic information is given. The company had elected not to file its profit and loss account, which it is perfectly entitled to do, but unfortunately this means that it is difficult to get a picture of the company's overall financial activities. It did file a balance sheet, which shows that, at the last balance sheet date of 30 June 2014, there was a balance of shareholders' funds of £37,589. No bank account or cash is shown on the balance sheet.

- There are two directors of the company: firstly, a Mr. Heinz Frederick Abletshauser, a German who lives in London and was born in 1936 so he must be 79 years old now, who was appointed a director of the company in 1992; and secondly Fiona Elfie Lascelles, a British national who lives in Surrey and was appointed three years ago.

- There are 3000 ordinary shares of £1 each, of which 30 are owned by Mr. Heinz Frederick Abletshauser. The other 99% are owned by Vereinigung der mund und fussmalenden Künstler in aller Welt, E.V. (VDMFK), which loosely-translated means "The Association of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists Around The World".

2. Mr. Heinz Frederick Abletshauser is a director of one other company in the UK: Fine Art Distribution Company Limited. He is the sole director and sole shareholder. Just like MFPA Publishing Limited, this company gives its business as "Printing not elsewhere classified", but unlike MFPA Publishing Limited its balance sheet shows a bank account, and it had £965,905 in it as at the last balance sheet date of 30 June 2014.

I then found that, according to their website, VDMFK has its headquarters in Liechtenstein, which has a reputation as a secretive tax haven. There you can find the Director Mario Famlonga, who joined the company a few years ago. In his own words, "Over the past 20 years, I’ve worked in various capacities for international banks. Most recently, I was working as the director of a leading private bank, advising wealthy clients". Apparently, Mr. Famlonga previously worked for UBS. I had assumed that the organisation would have few taxable profits because all its profits were being ploughed back into helping disabled artists, so why the direction of an international banker in Liechstenstein??

I had previously thought that this organisation gave help and support to aspiring foot and mouth painters, whether they were any good or not, on the basis that they would find it therapeutic and beneficial. However, the numbers they give on their websites are quite small, so I now wonder if they mainly help the talented artists: the UK website says that they have 32 British artists, and the global website of VDMFK says they have 815 artists in 78 countries around the world.

There are lots of questions here, to which there are no doubt proper answers. However, for me the lack of charitable status is decisive and so I have written to the company to ask them to take me off their books and not send me any further material.

It appears that I need to develop the point that I was trying to make. To me, the words "Liechtenstein headquarters" and "international banker" do not sit easily with the interests of a self-help group of mouth and foot painting artists, and it seems that I have reason. Here are the last few paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry given at the top of this forum in the post of Budgie123, which reports that whereas the organisation states that 80% of the profits go to the artists they declined to produce the records to prove it, and the company lost a Danish libel case in 2007 where journalists made statements such as:"Behind the scenes we found a well-oiled money making machine with economic puppeteers, who are scraping in money with arms and legs", "People think they are supporting a charity, but in reality we are looking at a money making machine" and "...only a measly 3% is going to the mouth and foot painting artists". AMFPA has not appealed the decision.

Extract from Wikipedia entry:

The criticism includes:

- That AMFPA effectively poses as a charity organization although it is purely a commercial venture, in effect conning charitable people out of money.
- That high salaries, favourable loans and property lease contracts are given to AMFPA's long-time legal adviser Herbert Batliner, his friends and family and other lawyers employed at the AMFPA. Herbert Batliner retired in 2013.
- That funds are being diverted to unknown parties via a network of "mailbox" companies.
- The secrecy maintained by the company.

No claims have been made suggesting any illegal activity by AMFPA. The criticism has been centered on what is perceived as bad ethics.

AMFPAs responds to the criticism

The AMFPA has in some news reports and court hearings responded to some of the claims, stating that AMFPA has never intentionally presented itself as a charitable organization, but instead has explicitly pointed its commercial nature out to consumers. AMFPA has also stated that 80% of the world wide profits are distributed among the artist. AMFPA declined to present financial records to support this claim.

Litigation

In June 2007 the company sued Danish Broadcasting Corporation and Danish daily Ekstra Bladet for libel after negative coverage during December 2005. On October 10, 2008 the High Court of Eastern Denmark ruled in favor of the accused journalists, stating that there was sufficient factual basis for statements like: "Behind the scenes we found a well-oiled money making machine with economic puppeteers, who are scraping in money with arms and legs", "People think they are supporting a charity, but in reality we are looking at a money making machine" and "...only a measly 3% is going to the mouth and foot painting artists". AMFPA has not appealed the decision.