One byone, she confirms our new allegations... but says her heart is ‘clear’

FOR a woman whose personal reputation and career is in tatters, Camila Batmanghelidjh sounds remarkably calm. She spent two decades building Kids Company into one of Britain’s most highprofile charities.

Prime Ministers, rock stars and bankers were equally charmed by exotic Iranian-born Batmanghelidjh – bewitched even, according to some.

She would sweep into a room in a swirl of flowing peacock robes and headdress, and then leave with several million pounds for Kids Company.

Batmanghelidjh claims she has ‘never’ worn a conventional suit or dress, and insists her flamboyant wardrobe is not part of a carefully constructed Mandela-esque image.

‘It is just two scarves tied on top of each other,’ she says. ‘It isn’t crafted, I swear to God.’

Rot – it’s like Boris Johnson’s ruffling of his blond hair, part of her “brand”, I tease.

‘No. It became a brand but it wasn’t generated as one.’

Now, Batmanghelidjh’s colourful brand is indelibly stained by a welter of allegations.

CORRUPTION; incompetence; nepotism; drug taking; sex abuse; deserted Kids Company offices where a handful of her ‘favourites’ received cash handouts; her ‘dictatorial and manipulative’ style.

During an hour-long interview with The Mail on Sunday, she vehemently defends her charity. But where on earth did all the money go?

‘If we were a little pony-riding charity and had had £5million, you could say we’ve received a lot of money,’ she says dismissively. ‘We do not hand out money willy-nilly.’

Kids Company was set up to help ‘vulnerable and abused’ young people – its ‘clients’. In fact, many of those who receive the most help are now adults who have been on its books for years and are handled directly by Batmanghelidjh.

‘Because I am very experienced, I end up with the most high-risk cases, but there’s no reason for me to have favourites,’ is how she puts it.

Several of these appear to be among the 25 ‘top-ranking’ Kids Company ‘clients’ who received a staggering £769,000 of the charity’s money last year.

There are complaints that some loiter around the charity’s offices, sometimes with jobs, but often doing little of any use, while at the same time getting generous funding.

The response of Batmanghelidjh, 52, who has never married and has no children, is telling. Kids Company is like a family, she says. ‘Because we have been going for 19 years, some kids that we had in the early days are now older. It’s like a household,’ she adds. ‘Most children grow up and you kick them out, and tell them to go and get a job. But there are households where there are older children with special needs where parents end up still being carer for a twentysomething.’

In other words, Batmanghelidjh accumulated more and more unemployable adults with nowhere to go. ‘To give them a daily routine we get them to do things round the place so they are hanging round,’ she says.

Hanging around on £50,000 a year? She adds quickly that the money is for psychiatric or other care, not doled out in cash. Nevertheless, three-quarters of a million pounds for 25 people seems huge.

‘It looks huge but if you peel back the narrative behind those cases, you will understand why they cost so much.’

What about the mounting claims of nepotism and cronyism? Such as using charity funds to send two children of her personal driver Jeton ‘Tony’ Cavolli to feepaying schools.

Batmanghelidjh insists that Albanian-born Cavolli is not her chauffeur but a ‘high-risk case worker’. But the facade of cool, calm control starts to slip.

INITIALLY she denies funding Cavolli’s son’s education at a fee-paying school for dyslexics, using all the wiles of a skilled politician. Eventually out comes the truth: the charity paid for a speech and language therapist so the boy could attend the school. Just as it paid for Cavolli’s daughter to attend a fee-paying school. Extraordinarily, it appears to be part of a wider Kids Company policy to pay for employees’ offspring to go to private schools ‘to reduce staff stress levels’.

She states: ‘As part of a wellbeing package, if there are staff having difficulties at home we have a policy of helping them to reduce stress at home as well. We have helped a range of staff with a range of things.’

She says that the policy was approved by the Charity Commission and HM Revenue & Customs.

Batmanghelidjh also struggles to explain how Cavolli’s sisterin-law, Magbule Mulla, came to work at Kids Company. Ms Mulla was employed ‘not because she is a crony but she is an extraordinarily brilliant accountant’. An extraordinarily brilliant accountant described by Batmanghelidjh in a fashion magazine interview last year as ‘the lady who sews for me’.

Did Mr Cavolli help her get the job? ‘Er, she was interviewed along with others.’ But it is when I quiz her about her Kids Companyfunded White House that she sounds least convincing.

The property was to house Kids Company ‘clients – a whole lot of them who all have mental illnesses’, she said. We have been told that there has often been as few as two ‘clients’ there. And did the charity really need to spend more than £5,000 a month on a Grade II listed Art Deco property with its own indoor swimming pool?

‘The kids don’t use the swimming pool,’ she says.

Hold on a minute, the ‘kids’ may not use it? But we have been told Batmanghelidjh herself uses the pool? ‘No, er, I do not.’ I put it to her again; we are assured she has swum there.

‘Yes but I pay separate rent for that,’ she stumbles.

Separate rent for the pool? She is tying herself in more knots than there are on her headdress.

‘Yup. Because I didn’t feel I should benefit from the house in any way.’ She refuses to give more detail, saying: ‘That is all you need to know.’ And snaps: ‘Whoever told you this has been malicious.’

There is another hint of menace when she turns to whistleblowers who revealed the Kids Company shambles to the Charity Commission and the media.

‘I know who they are and you have to question their motives. What they have done is wrong. The issue will be addressed,’ she says. What does that mean? She won’t say. How does she feel with her standing and life’s work in tatters?

‘My heart is very clear. If I’ve shed any tears, it’s been for the kids, not for me.’