Yentob faces directorship ban after Kids Co collapse
ALAN Yentob could be banned from serving as a company director over his part in the Kids Company scandal, it emerged yesterday.
The former BBC creative director, who was chairman of the charity when it folded in August 2015, could be disqualified under a move by Business Secretary Greg Clark.
The charity’s chief executive Camila Batmanghelidjh could also be banned, along with seven directors.
Mr Yentob, 70, is currently director of TV production firm I Am Curious, which he set up last year. It emerged last month that he still takes almost £500,000 from the BBC in salary and pension payments while fronting little-watched arts series Imagine.
Kids Company shut down just days after it received a £3million government grant in a final attempt to keep it afloat. Yesterday it was announced that the Insolvency Service has written to former directors of the charity informing them that Mr Clark intends to start legal proceedings.
The Insolvency Service said that ‘the Business Secretary intends to bring proceedings to have them disqualified from running or controlling companies for periods of between two-and-ahalf and six years’.
The court case will name former directors Sunetra Atkinson, Erica Bolton, former WH Smith boss Richard Handover, Vincent O’Brien, Francesca Robinson, Jane Tyler, Andrew Webster and Mr Yentob.
Miss Batmanghelidjh, the charity’s founder, was not a director at the time it collapsed, but the lawsuit will claim she acted as a ‘de facto’ director and so should also be disqualified.
She ran Kids Company on a salary of £90,000 and was awarded a CBE.
The demise of the charity, set up to help children and young adults, was an embarrassment for former prime minister David Cameron, who said the £3million government grant would give Kids Company ‘one more go’.
Over 15 years the charity received £42million in public money, but after its collapse, MPs issued a damning report in February last year listing a ‘catalogue of failures’ and accusing its board of trustees of being reliant on ‘wishful thinking and false optimism’.
Mr Yentob chaired Kids Company for 12 years, and was accused of intervening in a BBC Newsnight report into the charity’s issues in July 2015.