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.

Some posters have suggested that because her mum was Belgian she wouldn't need refugee status as she could come to the UK automatically. This is only the case post-EU membership though (ie: after 1972) - I presume CB is older than this.

Fair play jeronimoh.

mrsgrumpy - she moved to the UK when she was 10/11 - after EU legislation. So not a refugee (and in any event, she could always have moved to Belgium so she wasn't ever a refugee)

So she sat in a cupboard, in a primary school, and children "came in their hundreds" to see her?
She's on another planet.

OK, thanks for the clarification odd. It is plausible though that she didn't have Belgian nationality given she was born in Tehran.

She's a fantasist, simply a more successful one than most, up to now. Someone commented earlier in the thread that she reminds them of Heather Mills, another deluded fantasist.

I'm fully qualified to diagnose fantasists, my father is one.

Yes, she also reminds me of my mother....

How do you know she could have moved to Belgium oddfodd? And why do you think her moving to the UK post accession means she wasn't a refugee? I don't ask in order to be argumentative here, I really do want to know why people think she wasn't recognised as a refugee. My reading of Belgian nationality law, discussed upthread, is that her mother wouldn't have been able to transmit her citizenship. And the fact that your parent is a citizen in one country doesn't mean you as a non-citizen child can live there: for example, the British mother of an Iranian, non-British child wouldn't automatically be allowed to have them in this country with her. Belgium may or may not have been the same in 1979.

Totally engaging in pop psychology here but is it possible she has narcissistic personality disorder?

This is true. My father (the fantasist) is American. My mother (the narc) is British. I was born in the UK. I do not have a U.S. passport, I could have, but I chose not to.

I do bitterly regret that occasionally, but now I could only get one if my father sponsored me. Which would mean communicating. Not going to happen.

And then you'd have to pay US tax on your UK income. You are better off not having it!

Sorry LittlePig

This thread has turned extremely ugly since I last looked at it. Only a few months ago Kids Company and CB were everyone's favourite darling.

Suddenly its okay to criticise CB for being morbidly obese and dressing flamboyantly?

Yes, there is a discussion to be had about finances and Kids Company but can we try to reign in the below belt level personal insults maybe?

Very much like the late Clarissa Dickson Wright, again father was a doctor ( to the Royal family?)wealthy family, also pituitary gland problem that caused her obesity ( quinine poisoning) Youngest ever woman to become a barrister.

DH is Belgian and said that in the past Belgium didn't recognise dual nationality. So that might account for it. As for the rest, having worked for a total nightmare boss in the charity sector who got away with it, I can say anything is possible. I wouldn't have believed the things that went on could happen in a modern workplace if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

I grew up in Belgium. If your parent is Belgian, you have right of residence, whether or not you were born there. Same as in the UK and that hasn't changed since the EU started. What was an issue (before the EU) was if your child born outside the country then had children.

So for example, without the EU, if CB had given birth to children in the UK, they wouldn't have had right of residence/citizenship in Belgium. But nowadays that's a moot point.

I agree with Mintyy that criticising CB's weight is unnecessary. Let's not bring this interesting and well-informed thread down by resorting to personal attacks.

You had to give up your nationality of the other country as pirate says. But that still doesn't make you a refugee (and if CB's a refugee, can we call the ** migrants in Calais refugees too rather than downgrading them to migrants because we all know that's about trying to position them as scroungers)

Her mother has an Arabic name, It is on genes reunited. She might be 1/4 Belgian, who only knows.

If your parent is Belgian, you have right of residence, whether or not you were born there. Same as in the UK and that hasn't changed since the EU started.

This is not necessarily the case. My kids just got UK citizenship but their children (if born outside the UK) wouldn't have the right to reside in the UK as I am not born British and nor where they. So even if CB's mother was Belgian, her kids might not necessarily be able to live there legally. Her mum could very well have had Belgian citizenship not through birth (which, if it is the same as in the UK, means it doesn't automatically get passed onto the kids)

Sorry mrsgumpy - that's absolutely true. I was assuming that if her mother was considered Belgian on wiki, that she was born there. She may not have been.

This is all pointless speculation really and is tangential to whether or not KC did any good and how culpable CB was/is for its collapse

I think her nationality is not the most important issue here. It is a blatantly obvious that she has used this charity to bankroll millions for herself.

Her ethnicity, flamboyant sense of dress, being a woman, and her weight have served to create a smokescreen that until the collapse of Kids Company, few people have questioned.

I remember thinking Heather Mills and Clarissa Dickson Wright were awesome women until the penny finally dropped ( before they were outed as liars) and feeling very foolish for falling for their bullshit.

I've always felt something was amiss with CB but until recently wasn't aware of her status.

It's hard to believe that in our modern climate we could be so easily fooled. Would Clive of India have got away with it today? Well it seems they most likely would have.

CB's father married in Chelsea in 1955, the spouses name is Lucile. Her surname is definitely Arabic. It's on genes reunited. The mother is still alive and living in London. No record of her sisters ( Lila)death.

I think she changed her name to Camila.

Camilla is awfully similar to Lila.

CB spells her first name with one L, I think - Camila