Camila’s own private swimming pool... in luxury mansion paid for by Kids Company
CONTROVERSIAL Kids Company boss Camila Batmanghelidjh had a ‘personal private swimming pool’ in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from the charity’s funds.
The disclosure comes as a Mail on Sunday investigation into Kids Company also established that:
One of Ms Batmanghelidjh’s senior aides lives in the elegant London home called The White House, which is worth at least £1.5million and has cost the charity £200,000 in rent.
The house was obtained as a home for underprivileged children – but they were not allowed to use the swimming pool although Ms Batmanghelidjh took regular dips.
Charity funds were used to help two children of Ms Batmanghelidjh’s chauffeur to attend a feepaying school.
The charity has a policy of paying school fees for the children of staff ‘to reduce employees’ stress levels’.
The charity gave the chauffeur’s sister-in-law a top finance job – she also makes the former charity boss’s trademark colourful outfits.
A leaked document shows the charity spent more than £750,000 on 25 ‘clients’ in one year. Many are adults in their 20s and 30s.
The revelations follow the closure of the charity earlier this month amid allegations of financial misconduct and sexual abuse claims. Kids Company, set up 19 years ago to help severely disadvantaged children, collapsed with the loss of 600 jobs after Prime Minister David Cameron cancelled its latest £3million taxpayer handout.
The closure of the charity, which received a total of £40 million of taxpayers’ money, has led to a stream of new allegations from Kids Company whistleblowers over the way it was run.
The Mail on Sunday can disclose that the charity has paid an estimated £5,600-a-month rent for The White House, a five-bedroom property with an indoor swimming pool in North London. When this newspaper asked Ms Batmanghelidjh why the charity had spent so much on a luxurious property, she said it was needed to provide space for the young people it claims to help.
She said the ‘kids’ did not use the pool. Ms Batmanghelidjh initially denied she used it. Pressed further, she admitted she did. She claimed she paid a ‘rent’ for her use of the pool – but declined to say how much she paid or to whom.
The house in Hendon, described by estate agents as a ‘stunning Grade II listed Art Deco’ property, is the home of Kids Company ‘house manager’ Azam Yousefi. It is thought that Kids Company has spent approximately £200,000 in rent on The White House since 2012.
Insiders at the charity say Ms Yousefi is both a friend and colleague of Ms Batmanghelidjh and that the Kids Company boss has been a regular visitor to The White House for swims.
Ms Batmanghelidjh said of Ms Yousefi: ‘I don’t know her from Adam.’ However, when Ms Batmanghelidjh led an army of her supporters in a march to Downing Street in protest at the Government’s decision to axe its funding, Ms Yousefi was at her side.
Ms Batmanghelidjh said Ms Yousefi was a Kids Company carer at The White House and looked after ‘a whole lot of people with very disturbed minds’ who lived there. But other sources say there have often been as few as two Kids Company ‘clients’ there.
The Mail on Sunday revealed last week that the Charity Commission was told that thousands of pounds of Kids Company funds were spent on paying costs associated with the boarding school education of the daughter of Ms Batmanghelidjh’s personal driver, Jeton ‘Tony’ Cavolli.
The charity is thought to have spent at least £50,000 to enable Mr Cavolli’s son to attend London’s Fairley House School for dyslexic children. Ms Batmanghelidjh said the charity did not pay his fees, which can be up to £30,000 a year. Instead, it paid for a speech and language therapist at the school to help Mr Cavolli’s son’s ‘very severe needs’.
She said Mr Cavolli’s sisterin-law, Magbule Mulla, who makes Ms Batmanghelidjh’s clothes, was taken on in the Kids Company finance department because she is a ‘brilliant accountant’.
Ms Batmanghelidjh was asked about a leaked list of the 25 ‘clients’ who received the most money from the charity. The list, headed ‘Analysis of Kids Costs,’ is in the form of a league table, highlighting ‘changes in expenditure for children with [the] highest ranking’. In 2014, a total of £769,150 was spent on Kids Company’s 25 ‘top ranking clients’. The number one position went to a ‘client’ who benefited from £73,364 of the charity’s funds in 2014.
Second place went to a ‘client’ who received £59,886 in 2014 and £46,344 in 2013, making a total of £106,230 over two years. Ms Batmanghelidjh confirmed the document was genuine and said the money was used to pay for psychiatric and other help.
Many of the 25 ‘clients’ are adults. Ms Batmanghelidjh said many had come to the charity as children nearly two decades ago and still needed help as adults – so Kids Company provided it.