Will Kids Company Camila and her BBC sidekick ever face the music?
A catastrophic charity collapse. Two inquiries that hit the buffers. An unexplained delay on her memoirs. As a new musical lampoons the fiasco . . .
ALAN YENTOB, BBC creative director, throws up his arms in despair. His rich baritone trembles with bathos as he sings: ‘Michael Gove even said it was an inspirational charity!’
The audience titters. The line does not have the lyricism of a Rodgers and Hammerstein, but it is genuinely funny.
And true. The real Mr Yentob — rather than the actor playing him in this stage production — really did say, rather than sing, it.
Just like the BBC bigwig himself, who became embroiled in the scandal surrounding the collapse of the Kids Company charity of which he was chairman, there is something more than a little unconventional about this new musical being previewed in London last week.
First, there is the title: ‘The Public Administration And Constitutional Affairs Select Committee Takes Oral Evidence On Whitehall’s Relationship With Kids Company.’
Then there are the lyrics, taken verbatim from the Hansard transcript of the testimony given by two witnesses who appeared before that committee of MPs on October 15, 2015.
One was Mr Yentob. The other was enigmatic charity supremo Camila Batmanghelidjh, once known as ‘the angel of Camberwell’.
The pair had been summoned to the Commons to explain how Kids Company, the charity of which Ms Batmanghelidjh was founder and CEO, had gone bust amid allegations of financial irregularity and sexual abuse, having received almost £50 million of public money.
That was almost two years ago. And while the musical is opening this week, the public still awaits a definitive official explanation of the charity’s controversial modus operandi and dramatic demise.
The select committee had no powers to act on its own damning findings of an ‘extraordinary catalogue of failures’. Two statutory bodies that do have such powers — the Charity Commission and the Insolvency Service — were supposed to deliver their own reports on Kids Company last autumn. They did not.
Both bodies say inquiries are ‘ongoing’ but there is no indication as to when they might end. Ms Batmanghelidjh’s autobiography, due out late last year, is similarly delayed. And so the extraordinary saga rumbles on. The woman at the centre of it all, 54-year-old Camila, keeps, in contrast to her life before the scandal, a low profile these days.
On a rare outing last summer, she was photographed as she went to lunch with representatives of a foreign government ‘ which is having to deal with a lot of young refugees’ at the Michelin- starred Pied a Terre restaurant.
Most of the time she lives quietly in her modest North London flat.
Ms Batmanghelidjh says she is continuing to help many Kids Company children, with the financial backing of donors who stayed loyal.
While the Metropolitan Police found insufficient evidence to press any criminal charge, anecdotal evidence of institutional anarchy and excesses at Kids Company still has the power to shock.
Brown envelopes stuffed with cash were handed to troubled children as a matter of course. Twelve-year-old clients were given £150 trainers; others were flown first class to America. Some £50,000 alone was allegedly spent on taxis at the charity’s Christmas party.
Kids Company rented a £4,000-amonth Grade II- listed art- deco mansion in North London, in which a member of the finance department and one of Ms Batmanghelidjh’s PAs lived. Ms Batmanghelidjh swam in its indoor pool.
That such large amounts of paper money could allegedly be thrown around like confetti was, say critics, because Kids Company became the UK’s most fashionable good cause.
Flamboyant, Iranian-born Camila could charm the birds from the trees. Then prime minister David Cameron was said to be ‘mesmerised’ by her, while his wife Samantha was a backer, along with Prince Charles and a host of other A-list celebrities and City financiers.
KIDS Company received £46 million from the UK taxpayer over 13 years, including £3 million days before it shut. Rock band Coldplay ploughed in a further £ 8 million from royalties.
Ms Batmanghelidjh claimed her charity had 36,000 young ‘clients’.
No doubt there was and remains a very real need for children from splintered families to be supported in Britain’s troubled inner cities.
But something within the organisation was not right. It needed only a small push for the already teetering edifice to collapse. That pressure came from an unlikely quarter.
Pensioner Joan Woolard was the catalyst to Kids Company’s spectacular downfall and remains one of Ms Batmanghelidjh’s fiercest critics.
Having heard the charity boss speak on Radio 4, Mrs Woolard was inspired to sell her home and donate the proceeds — more than £200,000 — to the Kids Company.
Doubts began when she asked how the money had been spent.
The answers were unsatisfactory. Her experience of spending some time at Kids Company offices alarmed her further — and she asked for her money back.
Hers was the first public voice of dissent against this fashionable and feted good cause. Ms Batmanghelidjh denied any wrongdoing.
But the money remained in Ms Batmanghelidjh’s hands. Kids Company needed it desperately.
Encouraged by Mrs Woolard’s public stand, whistle-blowers from inside the organisation began to come forward.
The unsubstantiated allegations of sexual abuse were the final straw.
In August 2015, the charity shut down, laying off scores of staff and abandoning thousands of children.
Some of the evidence subsequently given to the Commons select committee presented a shocking litany of financial chaos, rampant nepotism and very dubious methodology.
The committee concluded: ‘There appears to have been a catastrophic confluence of factors that have conspired to allow this charity to operate as it did, for as long as it did.’
THEIR report said the ‘approach of successive governments and ministers towards Kids Company has proved to be an improper way to conduct government business or handle public money’.
Alan Yentob had failed to restrain his ‘ unaccountable and dominant’ CEO. His employer, the BBC, was also ‘accused of poor leadership for failing to take action against him when he tried to make suggestions about the BBC’s reporting of Kids Company’. In other words, bad journalism.
One of the committee’s witnesses, a high-ranking worker who was granted anonymity, gave a particularly damning insight into what Kids Company had become.
She said: ‘The charity was run by the CEO as her personal fiefdom, with no regard whatsoever for the financial implications. It was simply unsustainable to continue to take in anyone who asked for assistance and, in certain specific areas, ridiculous amounts of money were spent wantonly and inappropriately.’
Ms Batmanghelidjh had favourites among the youngsters she helped. ‘One group of young adults — many of them in their late 20s — were known throughout the organisation as “Camila’s kids” and inordinate amounts of money and resources were lavished on them; creating envy and resentment among others.’
But staff were also treated lavishly, the witness stated, and nepotism was rife. ‘Sasha and Jamie Handover (the children of former WH Smith boss Richard Handover, a trustee) were both employed at KC,’ the witness said.
‘ The so- called “Operations Manager” — a sweet but totally inefficient woman who kept odd hours — turned out to be the mother of one of the IT chaps.
‘Magbule Mulla — who worked in the finance department — is the sister-in-law of Jeton (Tony) Cavolli, who was Camila’s driver.’
(While her Linked In page still describes her as ‘Assistant Accountant Kids Company’, Mrs Mulla was described by Ms Batmanghelidjh in one interview as ‘ the woman who sews for me’.)
Ms Batmanghelidjh would eventually admit that her charity had paid for both of Mr Cavolli’s children to be put through private schools; one of them a boarding establishment where the chairman of governors was one Richard Handover (a trustee).
Mr Cavolli had been described by Ms Batmanghelidjh as a ‘ therapist tasked with dealing with difficult young men and only had a car in order to go to their aid late at night’. But in the time she worked there,
the witness only ‘ heard him referred to as “Tony the Driver”.’
It was ‘Tony the Driver’ who was pictured holding the car door open for Ms Batmanghelidjh prior to that lunch at Pied a Terre restaurant last summer.
He was not her chauffeur, she later explained. He was working as an Uber driver and had given her a lift as a ‘favour’.
A university academic whose role as an Ofsted inspector in South London alerted her to Kids Company more than 15 years ago had watched its progress with alarm.
‘ The whole history of Kids Company is one of a failure of due diligence by local government, donor charities, the Tory Party, Prince Charles. They all failed. It is astounding,’ she told me.
Hers is only one of many critical voices. But there is an approaching counterblast. Approaching, but repeatedly delayed. Ms Batmang- helidjh’s autobiography was due to be published last autumn. Her ghost-writer is Tim Rayment, an award-winning journalist widely admired by his peers.
In early 2015 he was sent by his newspaper to investigate Ms Batmanghelidjh. Now he is firmly in her camp.
One view is that Rayment fell under her spell; like so many financiers, pop stars, politicians and royals before him, he was ‘hypnotised’, one colleague said.
‘I want to give voice to someone who has been silenced,’ Mr Rayment told me last year, rather generously of someone who had the ear of royalty and prime ministers.
‘Have I been naïve? Have I been mesmerised?’ he asks. ‘The time to make that judgment is on publication.’
Last night, a spokesman for Ms Batmanghelidjh’s publisher, Biteback, said she expected the book to appear in August. She explained: ‘We had initially hoped to do a very fast turnaround on this title, and therefore gave it a very ambitious publication date.
‘But it has turned out to be far more complex, both legally and in terms of the science involved, than we had first anticipated.’
The fall- out has indeed been complex and messy for those involved. Last December, Mr Yentob stepped down as Creative Director of the BBC as a direct result of his involvement in the Kids Company collapse.
Earlier this year, it was reported that the Insolvency Service had written to lawyers acting for Kids Company’s former board members to warn them it was minded to ban them from holding directorships. They included Ms Batmanghelidjh, Mr Yentob and Mr Handover. Which brings us back to the musical. In concept, it sounds heavier going than, say, Mamma Mia or Mary Poppins. But what I saw at a preview was a brisk tragicomedy; entertaining, balanced and necessarily inconclusive. None of the characters depicted had any part in its production.
Sandra Marvin, the actress who plays Ms Batmanghelidjh, has the sweetest voice in the cast: she sings the siren songs which persuaded so many celebrities, tycoons and politicians to donate. Her character was the centre of what one former employee likened in evidence to a ‘cult’.
‘Mr Yentob’ bewails the sudden denial of the public purse gold seam. He had mined it for years thanks to his contacts with David Cameron and the latter’s desire to give his Big Society slogan some substance and street cred.
Last night, a Charities Commission spokeswoman said: ‘When an inquiry is under way, we do not provide updates on when it is likely to conclude.
‘This is a high-profile case and when a report is available it will be posted online with full findings.’
An Insolvency Service spokesman said: ‘Our investigation into Kids Company remains ongoing. Each case has its own complexities and differences depending on the number of directors involved. There is no timescale for us to reach any conclusions. As such, it would not be appropriate for us to comment further at present.’
Miles Goslett, the journalist who first raised questions about Kids Company, in February 2015, is sceptical about the delay.
‘Both inquiries were set up the best part of two years ago and I was told privately last year they’d be published by Christmas 2016 at the latest,’ he said this week.
‘Even if these bodies are short on manpower, I’d have no difficulty believing that someone in Whitehall has taken the decision it would be politically sensible to keep them from public view for a while yet.’
As for Ms Batmanghelidjh, she hasn’t been to see the musical at the Donmar Warehouse.
‘It wouldn’t be fair to the actress who is playing me if I was sat in the audience,’ she told me.
She added: ‘I hope that one day the real facts will come to the forefront. There has been so much injustice in the way Kids Company has been portrayed.’