Naomi Campbell has been banned from being a charity trustee after an investigation into her Fashion For Relief organisation found “serious financial mismanagement”.
The supermodel has been disqualified as a trustee after a watchdog investigation into her charity, Fashion For Relief, found evidence of “serious financial mismanagement”.
Campbell has been banned from the role for five years after a Charity Commission inquiry found that her poverty relief charity donated only a small fraction of the money it raised from a series of celebrity fashion events.
According to the Mail on Sunday, Fashion For Relief spent more than $2.1 million (£1.6 million) on a star-studded gala in Cannes, France, but gave just $6,700 (£5,000) to good causes over a 15-month period.
The Commission has also revealed that the charity spent tens of thousands of pounds on extravagant expenses, including luxury hotel rooms, cigarettes, spa treatments and private security for Campbell.
It was also found that between April 2016 and July 2022, only 8.5 per cent of the charity’s spending went towards charitable grants.
Investigators have recovered nearly $468,000 (£350,000) from the model’s charity, which has since been split between Save the Children and the Mayor’s Fund for London, which reported Fashion For Relief to the regulators in 2021.
Campbell’s disqualification comes five months after the Charity Commission confirmed that the catwalk star’s organisation had been removed from the U.K.’s register of charities pending an investigation.
Tim Hopkins, the Charity Commission’s deputy director for specialist investigations and standards, said, “Trustees are legally required to make decisions that are in their charity’s best interests and to comply with their legal duties and responsibilities. Our inquiry has found that the trustees of this charity failed to do so, which has resulted in our action to disqualify them.”
As well as Campbell, her former colleagues Bianka Hellmich and Veronica Chou were banned for nine and four years, respectively.
The supermodel founded the charity back in 2005.
