Supermodel Naomi Campbell has been from acting as a charity trustee for five years by the UK regulator, after serious mismanagement was found to have taken place at . Campbell set up the charity in 2005; two other trustees, Bianka Hellmich and Veronica Chou, were disqualified for nine and four years respectively. While the charity was established to support humanitarian causes worldwide, apparently much of was spent on items including a luxury hotel, spa, security and cigarettes for Campbell.
A mere went towards charitable activity between 2016 and 2022. Campbell has since said she was of the charity, and is investigating what had gone wrong. Misuse of charity funds could be driven by many factors, including charity trustees being out of their depth on technical compliance, or a failure to separate the personal finances of trustees from those of the charity.
But whatever the motivation, using charitable donations for personal purposes is contrary to English and Welsh laws stretching back centuries. The focus of trustees should be on public benefit. Those harmed by the misapplication of charity funds are most obviously the people and causes that would have been supported by the charity’s public benefit objectives.
But the damage can be wider and more pernicious, affecting charity as a concept. Unfortunately, charity scandals are not new. As well as the case of Campbell’s fashion charity, there is the ongoing into and associated by the Charity Commission, which started in J.