Following the investigation, Campbell claimed that despite being the face of the charity, she was unaware of how the money was being used. Does being the mere image behind a charity absolve her from taking responsibility for this incident due to lack of control? Moreover, is her five-year ban from being a trustee reasonable?
Fashion for Relief was founded in 2005 to raise funds for different humanitarian causes, such as great disasters like Hurricane Katrina, the Ebola crisis in Africa and the global COVID-19 pandemic. Charity fashion shows were held in several major cities such as London, Moscow and New York, with many notable figures taking part in them, including the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson.
The Charity Commissions released a report detailing £290,000 of unauthorised payments made to one of Campbell's co-trustees, Bianka Hellmich. Both her and another trustee, Veronica Chou, were banned from participating in any charity events, for nine and four years respectively. Most of these payments have now been recovered by the Charity Commission.
Another misconduct included a £12,300 flight in 2018 from London to Nice when moving art and jewellery to a fundraising event. Allegedly, only 8.5% of the charity’s overall expenditure was on charitable grants between April 2016 and July 2022 - a tiny amount to be donated from such a profitable organisation.
Campbell refutes the report’s claim that she used the charity’s funds to cover her travel expenses, insisting instead that these costs came out of her own pocket. She promised to launch her own investigation of these claims and see what went wrong but is adamant that the report does not cover everything, including her claim that the luxury hotels were paid for by a third party. The charity was officially dissolved in March 2023, and the remainder of the money has since been used to pay debt or given to other charities.
Ultimately, the issue may lie in Campbell's own involvement in this - perhaps if she had taken more of an initiative in managing the behind the scenes rather than simply upkeeping an honourable public persona, the outcome may have been different. When running a charity, it is the owner's responsibility to prevent the misuse of money and make sure that there is transparency about how the funds donated are being distributed.
