A cancer charity boss who ploughed public donations into building a giant Welsh dragon statue has been ordered to pay more than £100,000 to local good causes. Simon Wingett’s foundation, Frank Wingett Cancer Relief, ran a shop in Wrexham Maelor Hospital, North Wales, but had not made a single charitable donation in seven years by the time of its closure in 2018.
Instead, his accounts showed he had invested £410,000 of the charity’s earnings during the same period in a project to create a 210ft dragon sculpture near the A5 in Chirk, Wrexham. Mr Wingett has long claimed the huge bronze dragon, which had planning permission to be erected on a former colliery site, would become a tourist attraction to rival well-known landmarks such as the Angel of the North.
The dragon has not been built. The charity was set up by his father to buy equipment and resources for cancer patients in Wrexham and the surrounding area after he was diagnosed with throat cancer in the 1980s.
