Arrest warrant issued for member of cult exposed by BBC

An arrest warrant has been issued for a senior member of Lighthouse, the life-coaching group which was the subject of the BBC podcast series, A Very British Cult.

The warrant was issued for Shaun Cooper, a director of the group's business entity Lighthouse International Group Holdings Trading LLP, for failing to attend court.

Cooper is the first senior member of the group that the authorities have taken this kind of action against.

Lighthouse began as a life coaching organisation founded by a man called Paul Waugh. But a BBC investigation exposed it as an organisation that ruined the lives of its members and tried to silence any critics.

In the two years since the BBC published its investigation, several people have left the group and are rebuilding their lives. But a small, committed group of members - now calling themselves Lighthouse Global Media - remain devoted to Paul Waugh. They deny that Lighthouse is a cult.

Following a separate investigation into Lighthouse conducted by the Insolvency Service, the High Court in London shut down the business entity "in the public interest" in March 2023, on the grounds that it had filed false or misleading accounts and not cooperated with the investigation.

The Insolvency Service investigation established that, between August 2014 and July 2022, the group received more than £2.4m income - even though it had not declared any assets or income.

Since then, the High Court has requested that all four company directors – Paul Waugh, Chris Nash, Shaun Cooper and Warren Vaughan – cooperate with the Official Receiver's ongoing efforts to identify any assets to pay those owed money by Lighthouse.

Paul Waugh, the leader, moved to South Africa shortly after the company was shut down, along with Chris Nash. Both Waugh and Nash have failed to comply with a November 2024 court order to turn over Lighthouse's financial records. According to Lighthouse's letters to the court, this is because both are suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

According to Daniel Curthoys, in court for the Official Receiver, Shaun Cooper had also failed to turn up for any of the numerous interviews arranged by investigators.

At a hearing on the 25 February 2025, the court was told, in a letter from Cooper's Lighthouse colleagues, that he was suffering from depression and anxiety, and had left the country. The letter was accompanied by heavily-redacted medical notes.

Insolvency and Companies Court Judge Sebastian Prentis said Lighthouse's letter was "a very long way short" of explaining why Cooper had failed to appear or provide any information to the two-year investigation into Lighthouse.

Granting the application for an arrest warrant, he noted that despite the claims made in Lighthouse's letter, Cooper was apparently well enough to leave Britain. Cooper's whereabouts are currently unknown.

Of the four former directors, only Warren Vaughan has so far cooperated. At an earlier court hearing, he told the investigators he had left Lighthouse.

In response to the investigation by the Insolvency Service, Lighthouse set up a website criticising the service, accusing it of "bullying" the group.

The site says that "Lighthouse refuses to comply with the Insolvency Service's demands, beyond the bear [sic] minimum necessary, on the basis that any 'investigation' has been falsely triggered by malicious and vindictive individuals and is thereby corrupt and invalid."