Thomas Cook boss gives up £3m of bonus over deaths of Corfu children
FORMER Thomas Cook boss Harriet Green has pledged to donate more than £3million of her own money to charity after the firm was branded ‘shameless’ for its handling of the deaths of two children in Corfu.
Christi Shepherd, seven, and her brother Bobby, six, died in 2006 after carbon monoxide from a faulty boiler seeped into their hotel bedroom.
An inquest concluded that Thomas Cook had ‘breached its duty of care’ to the family and had failed to adequately carry out safety checks.
It emerged this month that the tour operator had pursued £ 3million in compensation from the hotel owner between 2013 and 2014, while the parents of the two children received only £350,000 each.
Now Miss Green, who quit last November after two years at the helm, has pledged to donate millions of pounds worth of shares to charity amid a growing public backlash.
She will give away a third of approximately seven million shares Thomas Cook is due to give her in July to a charity chosen by parents Neil Shepherd and Sharon Wood.
At the current share price of 145.6p her payout would be worth £10.2million, meaning roughly £3.4million would be donated to charity.
The family claims that during Miss Green’s time as chief executive, Thomas Cook failed to apologise to the parents and tried to have the inquest scrapped.
They also accused her of refusing to meet with them and failing to reply to a letter they sent, claims she denies.
Miss Green, 53, said: ‘I have now reached out to the parents of Bobby and Christi Shepherd. On the basis that Thomas Cook are due to give me seven million shares, I have told the parents I will donate one third of that to a charity of their choice.
‘This terrible tragedy did not happen on my watch.
‘All of my actions were to make Thomas Cook strong so that this did not happen again.
‘I hold my head incredibly high about the work I did to ... put health and safety at the centre of the agenda.
‘My regret is that we didn’t meet (the family) before the inquest and that I didn’t handle the inquest.’
Thomas Cook has pledged to donate £1.5million, the damages it received less what it paid to its insurers, to the children’s charity Unicef. The family declined to comment.