Naomi Campbell wins appeal against five-year charity trustee ban

Supermodel Naomi Campbell has won her appeal against a five-year ban from being a charity trustee, after a tribunal ruled the misuse of funds at the charity she founded had been concealed from her.

A three-person panel of the First-tier Tribunal ruled on Thursday morning that Campbell had been “deceived” by fellow trustee Bianka Hellmich, who was primarily responsible for the financial wrongdoing at Fashion for Relief. The judges found there had been “serious misconduct and mismanagement” at the charity, but that the most serious features “resulted from Hellmich’s conduct and were concealed from Campbell”.

The tribunal also ruled that Campbell was “not responsible for the inappropriate use of the charity’s resources or any unjustified expenditure” during her stay at a five-star hotel near Cannes in May 2018. While she shared ultimate responsibility for failures to keep minutes and file accounts on time, the judges said this did not make her unfit to be a trustee. Fashion for Relief, founded by Campbell in 2005, was removed from register in 2024 after charity funds went on spa treatments, cigarettes and room service, plus £290,000 in unauthorised payments to a trustee. Hellmich, who the tribunal heard appeared to have been paid more than £500,000 from charity funds and used forged documents, was disqualified for nine years; trustee Veronica Chou for four.

Campbell said she had been “hurt deeply” by the ban, thanking the judges for seeing “the truth of what happened”. “Giving back has been part of who I am,” she said.