Supermodel Naomi Campbell has won a legal challenge to overturn a five-year ban on being a charity trustee, after a tribunal found she had been “deceived” by a fellow trustee.
Background of the ban
In 2024, the 56-year-old was disqualified from being a charity trustee for five years after the Charity Commission – which regulates charities in England and Wales – found serious mismanagement of funds at Fashion for Relief, which she founded. This included using charity funds to pay for her stay at a five-star hotel in Cannes, France, as well as spa treatments, room service and cigarettes.
Earlier this year, Campbell brought a case to the First Tier Tribunal to overturn the ban. In a judgment on Thursday, the three-person tribunal ruled in the supermodel’s favour, finding she had been “deceived” by fellow trustee Bianka Hellmich.
Tribunal findings
Judges Joe Neville and James Armstrong-Holmes, sitting with a third member, said: “There was serious misconduct and mismanagement in the administration of the charity she founded, Fashion for Relief.”
“The tribunal has found, however, that its most serious features, including unauthorised payments to Ms Campbell’s co-trustee, Bianka Hellmich, failures in the management of the charity’s finances and the misuse of its funds, resulted from Ms Hellmich’s conduct and were concealed from Ms Campbell.”
Campbell was one of three of the charity’s trustees to be disqualified as a result of the investigation, with Ms Hellmich disqualified for nine years, and Veronica Chou for four years. The judges continued that Ms Hellmich “used forged documents” and also deceived professional advisers and the Charity Commission. They added: “Ms Campbell was not involved in, and did not know of, that conduct.”
Campbell’s response
The judges also said that while Campbell shared responsibility for the charity failing to file its accounts on time, this did not mean she was unfit to be a charity trustee in the circumstances of the case “including the sustained deception” she had faced.
During a four-day hearing in June, Campbell said her “only mistake” was trusting Ms Hellmich, whom she alleged forged her signature and lied about her credentials as a charity lawyer. “I don’t look at it as a failure, I look at it as me trusting someone that I knew, someone that was a lawyer,” Campbell said, telling the central London tribunal that she and the Charity Commission had been deceived.
