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 will be very interested to hear the results of the Charity Commission's review. Those trustees must be shitting themselves.

I'm the finance director of a charity. I'd love to have a conversation with the FD of KC, but I suspect part of the problem is that there wasn't one. Or at least not one who could stand up to CB.

I completely agree with mentaldental upthread. Until now it's seemed like anyone who disagreed with or disliked CB was shouted down. Thank goodness that's changed.

Freudian, I think it's actually dangerous not to draw some type of parallel with JS. Purely because these events are things which shouldn't be allowed to happen again. Nobody, no matter how many good works they've done, should be allowed to avoid scrutiny. And there's also the side issue that both JS and CB have used litigation to stop criticism of them in the press and to avoid exposure.

Failing to draw those parallels means failing to ensure it doesn't happen again.

If you think it's dangerous not to draw some type of parallel I'd say it's at least equally concerning not to be clear about the vast differences

Yep, and as I said in my earlier post, the aims of their behaviour were different, but that doesn't change the fact that they both behaved in a remarkably similar manner to achieve those aims.

You know, the whole KC thing reminds me of something and I can't for the life of me remember what it is.

I am sure something like this has happened before, maybe even in London, where a charity was set up for a very specific purpose but essentially just bankrolled fancy lifestyles. I think it might have even been in the 19th century.

A ragged boys charity or something? Some sort of orphanage in Whitechapel that never took any children in?

Hetty Feather Werks?

Interesting piece from 2007...looks like she was using bullying tactics to keep funding back then too

www.theguardian.com/society/2007/oct/10/guardiansocietysupplement.childrensservices

Interesting piece from someone who has reported about her for 10 yrs.

www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11788079/Kids-Companys-Camila-Batmanghelidjh-How-we-fell-for-this-matriarch.html

Anyone seen the facebook page? ;"Damn Government spin, Make Camila Batmanghelidjh a Dame"

Oh bloody hell, what she says in that article lulu is so disingenuous. She says that because she is a women, "people assume I don’t understand finances and can’t organise systems."

But then see my link to the article in 2012 where she is happy to tell the world that the bits of paper her (seven!) PAs give her are incomprehensible to her.

I've really enjoyed this thread. MN at its finest, intelligent and eloquent.

I have had inside knowledge of some events the Adam has reported on in the past. They can and do misrepresent people and events so completely that you almost don't recognise the story. Hence I would take everything the DM says with a massive pinch of salt.

However, it is clear that massive amounts of public money were miss spent. It is hard to believe that this was just because CB was 'big picture'. I think it does seem like she missaprorated funds with full knowledge of what she was doing in an extremely manipulative and megalomaniac manner.

I can also see the parallels to JS as in people were blinded by the figure head/personality and didn't want to question what was actually going on.

In my view, it is the trustees who have the most to answer for. They are either complicit, or incompetent at best.

Apparently 32 UK charity CEO's are paid over 200K a year.

The median pay across the top 100 charities was 132K per annum.

Just to put CB's pay of 90K a year into perspective.

"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. "

She has never said or implied that almost all inner city children are "seriously brain damaged".

It's exaggerations like that which make me read threads like this with suspicion - it really does feel like there's a witch hunt going on.

I know her clothes are not important but ive been looking at them for days and it came to me what they reminded me of Nigerian queen she dresses as if she is a queen its a costume she flounces about it.

A CEO of a major charity, yet she fails to have a grip on the fundamental practices of social care that even a support worker earning minimum wage would be expected to have.

Her statements are full of ridiculous contradictions..wealthy parents, private school, a teenager living in poverty, unknown date of birth.

Thing is about liars..they think they are above reproach. A classic narcissist and megalomaniac.

I'm disappointed too but hearing her on the Vanessa Feltz show I thought she sounded very passionate but she complete;y avoided any responsibility and blamed any and everyone else. It struck me as very deflecting and does make me wonder a lot.

The truth will come out in time. I just hope they claw some of the money back for the kids.

Nicole ...

CB's insistence on brain damage with reference to the work KC does in England (i.e. she's not talking about Romanian orphans)> The apocalypse

yes, I do wonder if she has serious mental health problem - the compulsive lying and narcissism etc.

Some people try so bloody hard to be so PC it becomes arrogance. They refuse to see or believe that yes, there are problems. Rochdale, anyone? And anywhere else in the north. Can't these naive (at best) idiots see the harm they do?
And Chilli, spot on, my description of her entirely.

The Guardian article raises my eyebrows now, she says bus drivers stopped to give her lifts, but we know she wouldn't use public transport and had a chauffeur. She says that the security guards at her bank recognised her but from another poster we know that she was well known at her bank but not for positive reasons.

This cartoon on the cover of The Week sums it perfectly.

Werkz

Something like this? www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-32736404

She says that the security guards at her bank recognised her but from another poster we know that she was well known at her bank but not for positive reasons.

These don't have to be contradictory positions at all!

It's good to see that the thread still has some remnants of true belief.

She's being picked on because she isn't the usual white male on the (higher) charity sector salary.

She is the first person to be happy with scrutiny. I am sure she will go on to continue her good works.

Meanwhile I would support abolition of all tax relief on individuals giving to charity as it is a distortion.

Oh FFS RedDaisy she's not being 'picked on' there's not a conspiracy, she's quite clearly brought this on herself. She doesn't welcome scrutiny, she's only allowed scrutiny by people who have a vested interest in giving KC a glowing report, often a financial interest. And she's also been very quick to use the threat of litigation to head off scrutiny in the press.

Someone who said they dealt with her at her bank said she was an unpleasant bully. Now that's not something we can confirm. But it has the ring of truth to me. I wasn't saying the two had to be exclusive, but more that she was bending the truth by pretending that everybody she dealt with saw her as a hero.