Mother’s anger at former travel boss

THE mother of two children who were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning on holiday has accused Thomas Cook’s former chief executive of trying to use their memory to gain public sympathy.

Sharon Wood said she heard that Harriet Green was in line for a lucrative bonus-related payout only through newspaper reports and that she hopes to donate a third of it to charity on Wednesday.

Ms Wood said: “If Harriet Green feels the need to offload that money to salve her conscience, that is her decision to make, but to try to gain public empathy by attaching her donation to the memory of my Christi and Bobby I find abhorrent.”

“To suggest her family have anything to do with it is ‘simply wrong’, and I wish to make that clear.”

It has been reported Ms Green could receive six million shares next month, and said she will give two million of them to a charity to be chosen by the children’s parents.

She led Thomas Cook until last year, during a period in which the firm took legal action against the hotel involved and fought to stop inquests into the children’s deaths taking place in the UK.

Thomas Cook has been hit by a new wave of public criticism after an inquest jury decided this month that Christi, seven, and Bobby, six, were unlawfully killed and that the holiday giant breached its duty of care.

The children were found dead in a bungalow in hotel grounds in Corfu in 2006 on a Thomas Cook holiday with father Neil Shepherd and partner, now wife, Ruth when they breathed in fumes from a faulty boiler.

Ms Wood suggested Thomas Cook should “reconsider” handing out the bonus as the success of a family-friendly company should not just be about money and share prices.