to think Camila Batmanghelidjh must be lying when she says she has done nothing wrong in her spending of Kid's Company Charity Funding?

[LuluJakey1]

She is like Jimmy Saville in that what she has been doing has been under all of all our noses and we have refused to speak up about it or believe it.

It is not just the luvvies who have been up close and personal with her- involved with the charity and CB at a very close level, some even Trustees. It is also the employees and the parents of children, the children themselves, the volunteers. We are not talking about a hidden mis-use of funding. We are talking aout a whole culture of open waste and self-indulgence.

I know it is from The Daily Mail but it is actually an interview with het.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3199527/My-heart-clear-says-Kids-Company-boss-Batmanghelidjh-admits-charity-paid-school-fees-employees-children-denies-wrongdoing.html

£5000 a month rent on an Art Deco House with private swimming pool - which houses a member of staff, and the swimming pool is used by CB but hot by any children- they are 'not allowed' (her words)

£40,000 chauffeur- now a specialist worker (according to CB). also has private school and therapist funding for his 2 children.

Staff( how many?) have their children sent to private schools because the job is stressful and it is part of a 'staff well-being package'

The Chauffeur's sister is also employed - now as a 'brilliant accountant', last summer as 'the woman who does my sewing' (mind you that would be a full-time job in itself, but it does imply the charity pays for those vile outfits much as I suspected)

25 young people given £769,000 a year funding - £31,000 a year each, to do nothing. They are CB's specially selected young people- many of whom have received funding for many years. She describes them as 'like a family, hanging round the house'. She deals with their funding herself.

Yet STILL CB complains staff should not have spoken up about any of this and implies those who have will suffer for it.

In my view this woman and her behaviours are corrupt, dishonest and immoral.

Are my views unreasonable? I feel this could be jus the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is yet to emerge and prosecutions will be very likely.

I think there should be a down- to the -bone, in-depth investigation of every aspect of the work of this charity and of CB. Not simply any concerns that have now been raised but a complete trawl of the spending, the practices and the behaviours of CB herself.

I doubt she's done anything wrong at all but once the media get their teeth into you it becomes self perpetuating.

Oh ffs RedDaisy, this is a woman who is highly litigious but hasn't taken any sort of legal action over these claims which speaks volumes. She's the one who had a hissy fit and closed down KC without putting interim measures in place.

www.theguardian.com/society/camilabatmanghelidjh

Just gets better.

Sorry, poor link ,it was dated January 3rd 2014 in the Guardian.

Please try to find it, my sides are aching from laughing so much.

I wonder how she reconciles her talk about unconditional love with having favourites and dropping them.

In that guardian article she claims that she came to the UK as a refugee, but wiki states that her family emigrated to the UK and she then went to private school.

Those rodeo clown costumes don't come cheap.

Her Parents married in Chelsea in 1956. It's likely she was born here too
( and her name not Camila)

There are very few Bantmanghelidj's on the electoral register.

" she claims that she came to the UK as a refugee, but wiki states that her family emigrated to the UK and she then went to private school "

yes well refugees do have money sometimes as well.
I know of two or three families who were forced to leave Iran in 79, and none of them were especially poor. So what?

Interesting link, ChilliAndMint especially if you go to the third page of (rather older) hits, such as this one

I hadn't realised Ed Balls had given them £12m in 2008 (part of £100m to charity to tackle child disadvantage). Reminder that leaving it to the charitable sector wasn't new with Cameron.

I too know Iranian refugees who were not poor.

Her parents married in 1955

Being a refugee and going to private school are hardly mutually exclusive. Nor is emigrating and becoming a refugee- you do realise you can initially enter a country on eg a work or study visa and then get refugee status later jeronimoh? It's perfectly possible to emigrate and subsequently become a refugee. Which actually may well be what happened with CB, since her dad was a supporter of the Shah who was imprisoned after the revolution. Fair bet her and the rest of his family would've been considered at risk on return.

And if you know anything about her dad chilli, you'll be aware that he studied in the UK, including London. Which was pretty common for wealthy Iranians at the time. He also later worked there. You have zero basis for saying she was probably born here. Some of this is getting quite silly now. I am no fan of the way CB has behaved, but several of the last few posts are verging on drivel. Let's stick to the facts.

The Iranian revolution happened when she was 16.

She was at a Swiss birding school from 9yo then Sherborne school in England from age 12.

And her mother was Belgian so she would never be classed as a refugee.

It's just another of her lies.

Cross posted with a few others talking sense. But really, whatever CB has or hasn't done, some of you could stand to learn a bit more about the asylum system and recent history of Iran before speculating. Even if it turns out she stole all the money and is covering for hordes of paedophiles, picking apart her life story on the basis of wikipedia articles you don't understand is idiotic.

And her mother was Belgian so she would never be classed as a refugee.

That's not necessarily true.

" t's just another of her lies."

think of it as an exaggeration rather than a lie.
My friend who came here in 79 had a German mum and middle class parents- it was still an awful time for them.

In this www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/im-the-fat-beggar-kids-companys-camila-batmanghelidjh-reveals-why-the-fight-for-funds-for-vulnerable-children-never-ends-9171790.html she claims KC has 11,000 volunteers- where are they now?

Doing a little digging on Belgian nationality law, wikipedia seems to suggest that for people born before 01/01/67 ie CB, a Belgian mother could only transmit her citizenship outside of wedlock.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_nationality_law#Before_1_January_1967

Obviously wikipedia could be wrong, so I'm happy to defer to any Belgian lawyers who might be reading. However, the way I read it, she wouldn't have been entitled to citizenshhip. If she was, yes that would potentially cause an issue with getting refugee status in the UK. But actually, that part of her story seems to check out. In the UK at the time of the revolution, having previously emigrated, then becoming a refugee in or after 1979..

That's a real problem for CB now - her credibility regarding just about everything she says is in tatters.

There is so much inconsistency I the interviews she has given to newspapers over the years.

Yes they can twist things you say but I don't that that explains everything.

Eg in some reports she says she paid her school fees after her fathers inprisonment by asking her bank manager to release money from her fathers bank account, in another report she says she worked in nurseries over the summer to pay her fees (£30k now, what then I don't know but I can't imagine a 16yo working in a nursery would earn enough!).

you could stand to learn a bit more about the asylum system and recent history of Iran before speculating.

Oh definitely. Like how a (if not the most) democratic middle eastern country after WW2 had the US (with UK complicity) overthrow their elected government, and replaced with the distinctly undemocratic Shah.

All in the name of oil.

Tbf a lot of iranians left iran there would have been unrest for a while before it was taken over she probably was a refugee

Hmmm, well, if you do a little digging it's quite easy to find out that her mother had an Arabic surname of Iranian origin, which you certainly wouldn't expect a Belgian Roman Catholic to have in the 50s.

She also claims a sister committee suicide. And although that sister's birth cert is very easy to find, her death certificate isn't....

This albeit mail article from 2011 www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2017034/The-social-rejects-turned-Oxford-high-fliers-Now-remarkable-woman-transformed-lives-14-000-children-needs-help-.html makes KC sound like an episode of 60 minute makeover!

Well said Lurking.