Naomi: How dare you talk about all my rum chums!
SHE’S come under fire for rubbing shoulders with a string of unsavoury characters from Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey and Mike Tyson.
And Naomi Campbell wasn’t best pleased when last week’s Mail on Sunday reminded the world – in a report headlined ‘Naomi’s very rum chums’ – just how many dubious acquaintances she’s been photographed with over the years.
Now she has lashed out in a bizarre video on her YouTube channel, claiming that stories highlighting her notorious friends were ‘distorted.’ The five-minute video showed Naomi, 49, responding to sympathetic questions from an offscreen female interviewer. ‘This is a direct character assassination and it belongs in an Orwell book,’ she said, adding she had ‘rubbed shoulders with hundreds of thousands of people’ during her career.
The model has been photographed on many occasions with movie mogul Weinstein and House Of Cards actor Spacey, both of whom have been disgraced following abuse allegations, which they both deny.
Ms Campbell was forced to give evidence at the war crimes trial in The Hague of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who gave her blood diamonds.
She has also failed to explain why fugitive Indian tycoon Lalit Modi, who stands accused by Indian authorities of corruption, was a trustee of her personal charity Fashion for Relief – which has used celebrity-studded fashion shows to raise money for good causes since 2005 – until he resigned from the position last year.
And last week’s decision by the British Fashion Council to honour Ms Campbell’s philanthropic work came as flight logs emerged revealing that she flew in the private jet of Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted s ex off ender who committed suicide two weeks ago in a New York prison cell.
In her video she admits that she knew Epstein, adding: ‘ I was introduced to him on my 31st birthday by my ex-boyfriend Flavio [Briatore, the Italian businessman who has been convicted of fraud]. He was always front and centre at Victoria’s Secret shows.’
She was also pictured near Epstein’s alleged ‘madam’ Ghislaine Maxwell at the party in 2002, as well as Virginia Roberts, who says Epstein used her as a sex slave. Maxwell denies any wrongdoing.
The model denied knowing about Epstein’s activities, adding: ‘What he’s done is indefensible and when I heard what he’d done it sickened me to my stomach… I have had my fair share of sexual predators.’
She said she was ‘shocked’ by the coverage of her friendships with disreputable characters, before adding: ‘I’m not a saint… but I will not be held hostage by my past.’
Ms Campbell has been no stranger to controversy throughout her career, with four convictions for assault and a previous cocaine addiction to her name.