Laid bare in report that took 6 years, chaos at collapsed children’s charity
The charity Kids Company had been mismanaged prior to its collapse, a watchdog report found yesterday.
Following a six-and-a-half year investigation, the Charity Commission said the celebrity-backed organisation had repeatedly failed to pay taxes and its own workers.
Trustees including founder Camila Batmanghelidjh and exBBC executive Alan Yentob, its former chairman, were also criticised for not acting sooner to prevent catastrophe.
But the findings were immediately attacked by supporters yesterday, who insisted they contradicted a high Court ruling last year which cleared seven trustees of wrongdoing. Miss Batmanghelidjh indicated she may even launch fresh legal proceedings after accusing the watchdog of attempting to ‘rewrite history’.
Kids Company was set up in the late 1990s to provide support to children experiencing poverty and neglect.
It grew into one of the country’s best-known charities thanks to the relationships Miss Batmanghelidjh – known for her eccentric dress sense – garnered with MPs and even then-Prime Minister David Cameron. Celebrity backers had included musicians Sting and Coldplay, artist Damien hirst and comedian Michael McIntyre. It was controversially handed at least £46million of public money – including £3million days before it collapsed in 2015 amid a police investigation into unfounded claims of abuse and exploitation. The probe was dropped seven months later.
The Charity Commission report hit out at the group’s low level of reserves and made a formal finding of ‘mismanagement in the administration of the charity’ over repeated failures to pay creditors, including its own workers and the taxman, on time.
By June 2015, the charity owed more than £1.1million to hMRC and by the time of its liquidation in August of that year it still owed £850,000.
The report said the charity destroyed documents relating to how it spent money on some people, including in relation to school fees, rent, cash payments and clothing and birthday presents.
While noting the trustees were not responsible for the destruction of the paperwork, the watchdog noted the process ‘fell below the standards the Commission would expect from a charity’.
Last night Miss Batmanghelidjh called the Charity Commission’s report a ‘travesty’ which had ‘ignored clear evidence’.
‘Fell below the standards expected’