Naomi Campbell’s Charity Accused of Financial Fraud

Supermodel Naomi Campbell, who has never been one to shy away from mess, can no longer serve as a trustee of Fashion for Relief, the poverty-relief organization she founded in 2005. An investigation found evidence of financial misconduct after the inquiry revealed that of the millions the charity raised, only a fraction was actually delegated toward charitable causes. Campbell’s ban will last five years.

The findings showed that over five years, Fashion for Relief raised £4.8 million but sent only £389,000 to its partner charities. According to The Guardian, tens of thousands of pounds were spent on “luxury hotel rooms, flights, spa treatments, personal security and cigarettes for Campbell.” Campbell’s charges included running a bill at a €3,000-a-night hotel room and paying €4,000 for personal security in Cannes. The organization also funneled £290,000 in unauthorized consultancy fees to Campbell’s co-trustee Bianka Hellmich and £26,000 for travel expenses annually. Hellmich has been banned from being a trustee for nine years and paid back the fees in full to the Charity Commission in April 2023. Veronica Chou, another trustee at the charity, has been banned for four years.

In one instance, the report details that Fashion for Relief raised £375,000 at a fundraising event for Save the Children in 2017 but did not finish paying out that amount to the charity until nearly six years later, in 2023.

Campbell and her cohort had defended the extraneous charges by alleging that their charity’s sole purpose was not just fundraising. (Which seems like a hard sell when the word relief is literally in your organization’s name, on top of invoking Nelson Mandela as the inspiration for starting it, but we digress.) Yikes.