Naomi Campbell wins legal challenge over charity trustee ban

Naomi Campbell has won a legal challenge to overturn a five-year ban on being a charity trustee after judges found she was unaware of serious misconduct at the charity she set up and helped oversee for several years.

In 2024, the 56-year-old supermodel was disqualified from being a charity trustee for five years after the Charity Commission – which regulates charities in England and Wales – found mismanagement of funds at Fashion for Relief, which she founded.

Campbell brought a case to the first tier tribunal to overturn the ban earlier this year, saying she had been “deceived” by fellow trustee Bianka Hellmich, who had forged documents and lied about her credentials as a charity lawyer.

The commission argued Campbell had “completely abdicated” her responsibilities as a trustee and was “highly culpable” for failures of governance and misuse of funds.

This included use of charity funds to pay for Campbell’s stay at a five-star hotel in Cannes, France, as well as spa treatments, room service and cigarettes, and paying a trustee £316,000 in unauthorised fees and travel expenses.

However, in a judgment on Thursday a tribunal ruled in the supermodel’s favour. The 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 Hellmich disqualified for nine years, and Veronica Chou for four years.

The judges said 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.”

The judges also said 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.

It is understood to be the second time a court has overturned a trustee disqualification order made by the commission.

During a four-day hearing in June, Campbell said her “only mistake” was trusting Hellmich, whom she alleged forged her signature and lied about her credentials.

“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 London tribunal that she and the Charity Commission had been deceived.

Speaking to the Guardian, Hellmich previously said there was “absolutely no truth” to Campbell’s claims.

The judges rejected criticisms made by lawyers for the commission about Campbell’s evidence, including that the supermodel was focused on “controlling the media narrative”.

They said: “In our assessment none of Ms Campbell’s answers were capable of being taken as doing any such thing,” adding that her evidence and conduct while the charity operated “was entirely honest”.

A probe into Fashion for Relief was opened by the commission in 2021, after partner charities, including Save the Children and the Mayor’s Fund for London, received just a tiny fraction of the proceeds of events organised by Fashion for Relief for their benefit.

The charity was dissolved and removed from the register of charities in 2024.

It had been set up with the aim of uniting the fashion industry to relieve poverty and advance health and education by providing grants to other organisations and giving resources towards global disasters.

A Charity Commission spokesperson said its intervention had ensured £250,000 of funds raised for charities including Save the Children and The Mayor’s Fund for London was passed on to the organisations.

They added: “We made the disqualification order for Ms Campbell based on the evidence available to us at the time.

“The court recognised that Ms Campbell, the commission and the law firm concerned were subject to sophisticated deception by one of the other trustees. This was referred to the Metropolitan police when we became aware.

“We acknowledge and will reflect on the court’s decision and are considering any wider implications for our work.”