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.

What frustrates me the most is that even if the £7.2m that KC received in the last 5 months was spent directly on the children they were helping and not on things like school fees etc, how did those children get chosen?

Why those specific children in that specific area of South London and not some others? My reading indicates that children were mostly self referred which is just ripe for exploitation. It also means that you miss children that don't self refer for whatever reason.

But aside from that, what funding was given to children in other areas of London to balance the preferential treatment of the KC children? How about children from outside London? Were local charities in other parts of the UK given equal funding or favour that was proportionate to £7.2m of government money in 5 months? It just seems utterly profligate from the government never mind KC.

I am convinced that what we have seen so far is the tip of the iceberg. Lobbing out millions upon millions in public money and seemingly having no independent provision for noting and accounting for how every penny of said money was spent especially against a background of austerity is scandalous.

The whole thing stinks.

No that's the trustees' job Bobo. The auditor's job is to check for fraud and that what was spent was what was spent; to account for every penny but not to justify it (although obviously anomalous stuff you would expect to be picked up or highlighted for example by giving a spend per child figure but that is the job of the original financial report to provide that info).

It's not the auditor's job to say "that spend was in accordance with the charity's articles and aims". That's the job of the trustees who are supposed to review and sign off the accounts and by default raise any questions about what the money was being spent on.

Kc also operated in Bristol and liverpool thousands have been supported apparently

I've seen her in numerous interviews and was never quite sure what she did but I did get the impression that she was something of fantasist.

Apparently she does not know her own birth date as she was sent home without being registered - Wealthy family plus Iran was very Westernised in the 1960's.?

" Apparently she does not know her own birth date "

certainly she knows it within a day or two - what a lot of nonsense.

Not surprised at all by any of this.. I've always been very suspicious of her!.. Always said she's in it & money & glory

Haven't read whole thread yet but have met CB and even briefly worked with her and her colleagues when I was a teacher in a school taking part in one of the early Place To Be projects.
So my first thoughts are - notwithstanding that there are issues to be explored in the management and running of Kids Company - it does make me sad to see CB compared in any way to Saville.
I do think CB meant well and largely did some good work with children from poorer and under-privileged backgrounds
From my brief meeting with her she wasn't my favourite person ever but I think we were on the same side working to try to make children's lives better both now and for the future
JS was a whole other story (for want of adequate words)

The mother would know what day she gave birth to her daughter, I think it's very convenient that she cannot be properly identified.( outed)

Really interesting thread, I was starting to wonder if I was the only doubter of CB especially after previous threads on here describing her as an absolutely amazing woman or words to that effect. I agree this is tip of the iceberg stuff and that we will see a sure and steady demise of CBs good name.

The Charity Commission is continuing its investigations into the governance issues:

www.gov.uk/government/news/keeping-kids-company-updated-statement-on-case

Employees first alerted the Charity Commission in July 2015 over the school fees paid on behalf of her chauffeur's daughter. (I question why she has to have a chauffeur in the first place! Paid about £40,000 a year for 20 years.)

I think it takes very brave employees to become whistle-blowers when they know that their own jobs are at stake.

We aren't in disagreement, Moving, about the role of the auditors. They do have to confirm that expenditure (approved by Trustees) is in accordance with the stated purpose of the charity by signing off the accounts. Which is why I wonder who they were, when expenditure seems to have been quite unusual. School fees for staff, unless staff are posted overseas or travel overseas extensively, is an unusual perk.

I do think CB meant well and largely did some good work with children from poorer and under-privileged backgrounds

But part of the problem is that there's no evidence that she did do good work, aside from the occasional anecdote - and after the best part of 20 years, you would expect a LOT more evidence of success (and a lot more supportive anecdotes).

KC claimed that the good work they did was recognised in an academic report on their activities by the London School of Economics (by implication, independent and impartial analyses of KC's activities by experts in the field). Not very surprisingly, it turns out that the LSE 'report' was a puff piece for which KC paid £40K.

A former boyfriend of mine (South American born in 1960s) didn't quite know when he was born. The date on his BC was incorrect. Came from a rich educated UMC family. And my father has plenty of (white) South African born friends with dodgy birth dates. So I would be inclined to believe CB on her birth date story. Perhaps her background has a different relationship with facts and data to our own - might explain some things?

Kc also operated in Bristol and liverpool thousands have been supported apparently

Which I'm sure is admirable if they can find the children they claimed to be helping but it doesn't negate the fact that they focused on a small number of children for exceedingly large amounts of cash. And whilst it may be difficult to calculate the impact/outcomes of charitable work, I think it shows the government under a very poor light to be constantly pouring money into a charity working with a small number of children in a relatively small geographic area whilst removing funding from charities around the rest of the UK & NI.

Father, that is very interesting.

"This is what happens when taxpayers' money is taken away from accountable local authorities etc. and given to rather less accountable charities on no other basis other than our (poor judge of character) Prime Minister being influenced by their charismatic, colourful figureheads. I suspect there will be a fair few more cases like this to come out in the next months and years."

Yes. While it's tempting to solely analyse the personal failings of CB and KC, the problem here is a much bigger one.

The government increasingly wants to hand over public services to non-government agencies, whether privately run or charitable, without any due diligence, evidence base or monitoring. This is a recipe for disaster, as we've already seen both in KC and in several free schools.

Kingston Smith are their auditors and they're not a particularly large firm but do audit a lot of children/parenting charities. They're going to have some questions to answer I expect.

But ultimately it's the trustees who are responsible.

" Perhaps her background has a different relationship with facts and data to our own - might explain some things?"

oh you mean cultural differences? oh please, lets not go there. I bet her family came over in 79 when she would have been about 13. She then attended a rather nice establishment boarding school.

I agree with you I was quoting from their website about helping thousands in Bristol and Liverpool

"This is what happens when taxpayers' money is taken away from accountable local authorities etc. and given to rather less accountable charities on no other basis other than our (poor judge of character) Prime Minister being influenced by their charismatic, colourful figureheads. I suspect there will be a fair few more cases like this to come out in the next months and years."

YES. ABSOLUTELY.

Very interesting that LSE effectively took on PR work for CB

Being well meaning and larely doing some good work is not really enough though.

It's not acceptable. The whole thing sounds like a gravy train for a selected few. Private school fees to staff! Access to villa and pool....but not for the kids! A favourable report simply bought for 40k....

" on no other basis other than our (poor judge of character) Prime Minister being influenced by their charismatic, colourful figureheads."

Labour funded them a tidy amount too, well before the current PM held the purse strings.

25 young people given £769,000 a year funding - £31,000 a year each, to do nothing.

Except they weren't "young people", were they? It turns out most of them were in their 20s and 30s.

I have also noticed that CB is very quick to use the "mental health" card. The woman who gave KC the proceeds from the sale of her house was accused by CB as having mental health issues when she began to ask questions about where the money had gone. Then when asked about the rental of that art deco villa, CB responded by saying the children staying at the villa had very serious mental health problems.

I think this is a method she has used and still uses to silence awkward questions about KC. If someone challenges her, they are mentally ill. If someone asks about KC and the support it provides, she claims the children in question have severe psychological issues.

Again, she has historically given the impression that almost all inner children are seriously brain-damaged to the point of no return, as though there is no possibility of them living reasonable lives and we should be expecting an apocalypse of psychopathic criminals.

Mental health is a theme for CB, and she uses it to shock people out of questioning what she does.

I also noticed that when the news broke about KC and she was interviewed on the radio, one of the things she said was that she had spent the morning on the phone to a child who was about to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge.

I am sorry, but I just didn't buy it. Nor would a caring professional announce such information about a vulnerable client, even though no name was given, on national radio.