Arrest warrant issued for member of Lighthouse cult exposed by BBC
Arrest warrants have been issued to senior members of the Lighthouse, a lifesaving organization that is the subject of the BBC podcast series, A very British cult.
The warrant was issued for Shaun Cooper, director of the group’s business entity Lighthouse International Holdings Co., Ltd., for failing to go to court.
Cooper was the first senior member of the group that authorities took such action.
Lighthouse was originally organized by a life coach founded by a man named Paul Waugh. But the BBC investigation has made it a group that undermines the lives of its members and tries to silence any critic.
In the two years since the BBC published its investigation, several people have left the group and rebuilt their lives. But a small percentage of members – now claiming to be a beacon global media – remain committed to Paul Waugh. They deny that the Lighthouse is a cult.
After a separate investigation into the beacon conducted by the bankruptcy service sector, the High Court in London closed a commercial entity “for the public interest” in March 2023 on the grounds that it had filed a false or misleading account and did not cooperate with the investigation.
The bankruptcy service investigation determined that between August 2014 and July 2022, the group received more than £2.4 million in revenue – although no assets or revenue have been announced yet.
Since then, the High Court has asked all four company directors – Paul Waugh, Chris Nash, Shaun Cooper and Warren Vaughan to work with the official takeover to identify any assets that the Lighthouse pays for the owed.
Leader Paul Waugh moved to South Africa shortly after closing with Chris Nash. Neither Waugh nor Nash complyed with the November 2024 court order to close the financial records of the Lighthouse. According to a letter from Lighthouse to the court, this is because both suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
According to Daniel Curthoys, Shaun Cooper also failed to participate in any of the many interviews arranged by investigators for the formal recipients in court.
During a hearing on February 25, 2025, the court was told in a letter from a colleague of Cooper Lighthouse that he suffered from depression and anxiety and left the country. The letter was accompanied by medical notes for the reorganization.
Bankruptcy and Corporate Court Judge Sebastian Prentis said the Lighthouse’s letter was “a long way” explaining why Cooper failed to appear or provide any information to the Lighthouse’s two-year investigation.
He pointed to the application for an arrest warrant, noting that despite the requests made in the Lighthouse’s letter, Cooper was clearly good enough to leave the UK. Cooper’s whereabouts are not yet known.
Of the four former directors, only Warren Vaughan has worked together so far. During an earlier court hearing, he told investigators that he had left the beacon.
In response to the insolvency service investigation, Lighthouse set up a website that criticized the service, accusing the service of “bullying” the group.
The website said: “The Lighthouse refuses to comply with the requirements of bankruptcy services, except for the minimum required by the Bear (SIC), the Lighthouse is corrupt and invalid because any “investigation” is triggered by a person who is malicious and defended, and therefore corrupt and invalid.”
