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Dear Sirs,

I am writing to reply to the assertions that Oner Avara has made in response to your enquires about islington Boxing Club.

Oner has not raised £110,000 for the club this is quite clear from our published accounts, our net assets the year that he joined were already £79,000 and this reserve alone over the 10 years has generated interest of around £25,000 which already gives us a total of £105,000 before you take into account the boxers’ subscriptions that have added to our overall reserve total of around £115,000; it is therefore very unclear how he asserts to have achieved this! Other long standing committee members other than Oner have been instrumental in securing additional grant funding which has been spent on the upkeep and replacement of equipment. All of this is documented and clearly auditable.

In many ways Oner has profited from the Club, his building Company having been paid £26,000 for a variety of works carried out to the premises and obviously the excessive profit he has made whilst exploiting his position as Chairman to continue paying a well below market rate for hire of the club for the boxercise classes.

The club acknowledge that Oner Avara has done a good service to the club in the 10 years he has been with us, but so have many other longer term committee members and volunteers who have been with the club twice that length of time!! Each volunteer of the club is held in great esteem for their services.

Following on from this point, we agree that the proposed rent increase is sizeable, but it is simply an increase to the going market rate (Approx £40 ph) for a facility of our kind (A fully equipped boxing gymnasium of around 7000 sq ft) which is easy to prove if a simple comparison is made with other local venues or other boxing gyms offering similar square footage. Currently the pay only £8 ph, whilst generating considerable profits in excess of this. This is surely pure exploitation of a charity set up to provide for young people in this disadvantaged area and since it happened whilst Oner Avara was still Chairman a direct conflict of interest with the moral ethos of the club. As a charity our first responsibility is to those we serve and getting the best deal for them, not Oner and Enzo’s business.

We are fully aware that this forms part of Enzo’s livelihood but Left Hook also have another premise where they run classes from so it wouldn’t stop Enzo earning a living.

They have even refused to negotiate favourable terms despite genuine offers from us to do so from July, opting instead to bring a solicitor to one of the committee meetings unannounced! This catalogue of bullying and exploitative behaviour towards people who unlike Oner and Enzo give their time for free to the club is what has led us to issue them with 30 days notice as we can see no alternative, without the club and the good work it does with over 300 young people in this area being destroyed.

The strength of this club has always been its local roots so we would ask people to register their support at a face book site set up for this purpose and fight off an attack on what is a much loved local institution.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Support-Islington-Boxing-Club-against-Boxi...

Yours Sincerely

Ron Hagland