Naomi Campbell has said that “identity fraud and deception” by a fellow trustee of her former charity was to blame for a serious misuse of funds.<\/p>\n
Speaking at an appeal hearing to overturn a charity ban against her, Campbell alleged that co-trustee and lawyer, Bianka Hellmich, forged her signature and impersonated her using a fake email address to misdirect money that was intended for the charity, Fashion for Relief.<\/p>\n
Her “only mistake” was trusting Hellmich, Campbell told the tribunal on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
In 2024, Campbell was banned from running a charity for five years after a UK watchdog found widespread evidence of financial misconduct. She has always denied any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
Bianka Hellmich, who has previously told the Guardian there is “absolutely no truth to the allegations”, was banned for nine years and a third trustee, Veronica Chou, was disqualified for four years.<\/p>\n
The watchdog found that hundreds of thousands of pounds that should have gone to the charity was instead used on luxury hotels, spa treatments, cigarettes and security for the supermodel.<\/p>\n
In written submissions, Campbell’s lawyer, Andrew Westwood KC alleged that Hellmich “carried out a long-term and consistent scheme of mismanagement and deception in relation to the running of the charity” which she concealed from others.<\/p>\n
Campbell, 56, also accused Hellmich of lying about her credentials as a charity lawyer, admitting that she did not do reference or credential checks because Hellmich “came across as a lawyer” and had worked in “official positions”.<\/p>\n
“I trusted the wrong person, what more do you want?” Campbell told the court, when pressed as to whether she should have done more due diligence.<\/p>\n
“You trusted her too,” she said, referring to The Charity Commission, “because you were in communication with her until we let you know that you were deceived.”<\/p>\n
When it came to their various roles as trustees, Westwood said that Hellmich had advised Campbell that she could “confine herself to a limited role” within the charity, “in effect, acting as a figurehead \u2013 while Ms Hellmich assumed responsibility for those regulatory and financial functions.”<\/p>\n
But in a written submission, the Charity Commission’s lawyer, Faisel Sadiq argued that Campbell could not “abdicate” her responsibilities as a trustee to simply be a figurehead.<\/p>\n
The tribunal heard that both Campbell’s legal team and The Charity Commission have referred the forgery and fraud allegations to the police. <\/p>\n
The Commission confirmed this to the BBC and clarified that no individual had been reported, but rather a report was made on allegations of fraud and providing false or misleading information to the Commission.<\/p>\n
The BBC has tried to contact Hellmich for comment. It is unclear if she is still working as a lawyer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Naomi Campbell has said that “identity fraud and deception” by a fellow trustee of her former charity was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-642144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}