(part 2) to think that Camila Batmanghelidgh must be lying when she says she has done nothing wrong in her spending of Kids' Company 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.

Want2bSuperMum, I don't know what you audit, but I've worked in audit for companies which are probably closer in nature to KC. It's not just financial auditing in charities, the charities adherence to regulatory requirements would also be examined and that side of the audit should have thrown up questions about how KC was being operated and if their activities adhered to that. Some private education requirements were paid for an additional child, plus private health payments for a family member. For such large amount of money to be paid to one family where an immediate relation is a member of staff should certainly have been picked up by auditors.

Not to mention the fact that they weren't paying their employees tax and national insurance and paying some employees by giving them their salary as a charitable grant.

I've been an auditor and I am now the top finance person in a charity subject to audit so the previous two posts are interesting to me.

IME auditors do look at the "charitable objects" enshrined in the memorandum or articles of association of the charity to check that expenditure is in line with them. However it is hard to imagine a scenario where an approved expenditure would result in a qualified audit opinion...

A clean or "unqualified" audit opinion only expresses the opinion that the accounts give a true and fair view of the state of the charitable company's affairs as at and of its income and expenditure for the period then ended, and were prepared in accordance with the right set of accounting rules, in this case UK GAAP. A charity's audit opinion makes no reference specifically to the Charities SORP or the Charities Act, it only refers to the Companies Act and UK Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Unless there is something in the Companies Act specifically about charities. The Charities SORP is more about how to classify and describe income, expenditure and disclosures in the accounts of a charity, and really nothing about what sort of expenditure is "allowed" in the first place.

So if the expense happened, it was approved by the right people and properly paid and appropriately recorded in the accounts, it would not cause the accounts to be untrue and unfair.

I have been debating this with DH. A lot of people think that auditors give a lot more assurance about the figures than they do. DH's point is that a donor would not expect that a "fair" expense would be private school fees for a mere chauffeur. And I think he has a point. But it's not something you can issue a qualified audit opinion for. At most the auditors should be reporting it to the trustees of the charity pointing out that it is not (likely) withing the charity's objects and they could get in trouble with the Charity Commission. So maybe the Charity Commission needs sharper teeth and more of an active regulatory role with their own "charity auditors" - just like HMRC has tax auditors.

I audit broker dealers here in the US. They are highly regulated yet our audit work just touches the surface. We are there the prove to the SEC that the broker dealer is a going concern and has the $$$ to back up the reports they send to the SEC. As for making sure they are complaint in other areas?!?! A 60 day turn around time is not realistic for us to issue that sort of opinion.

Oh God Want2B the US regulatory environment is just a whole other level of crazy. I would not want to be in public accounting there, I am just not detail-oriented enough. And I am a monster-bordering-on-OCD-detail-monger here according to DH certain people!

I admire you!

Yes it is but with employees knowing that jail time is pretty much a certainty if they do something wrong it makes our lives much easier. Honestly, here in the US Martha Stewart was jailed for less.

Also when we go in and audit payroll all we do is check that what they say they paid was paid. If we see other employee related expenses, it isn't on us to check if they are properly taxed. That job belong to the IRS and their inspection teams. All I would want to see if them using a good payroll processing company for distribution (like ADP) test the controls at my client to ensure the employee data was complete and accurate (test controls around new hires, terms and pay rate changes) which would see me sample up to 60 employees if 500 employees. As long as the support matches the info in the payroll report we are good to go. I'm not going to run their social security number through everify to ensure its a real number.

Oh I well remember all of our internal control checklists! "What could go wrong"! When I was an auditor in Canada we had quite a few clients who were SEC listed (through say their American parent company) and the requirements were a bit scary. Not to mention the fairly fundamental differences between Canadian and US GAAP. Bit of a tangent, though.

That job belongs to the IRS and their inspection teams

I think a similar model for regulating the charities industry in the UK could be an interesting idea. Charity inspectors. We have inspectors for so many other things (Ofsted, tax inspectors, building control, financial services, energy inspectors etc) that surely this could work?!

Or maybe they already exist and are doing a shockingly bad job!

Inland revenue in the UK should grow some teeth. Nothing strikes as much fear in managements eyes as news of an IRS audit. It's basically a forensic examination. They will find stuff, you just pray it's nothing major.

Thanks for the views from auditors. I had understood that charity auditors had more responsibilities, such as checking on incorrect use of restricted funds.

As to HMRC growing some teeth, they already have teeth and are beginning to grow quite a lot more, and that is making waves. They do carry out PAYE & VAT inspections and that does strike fear into businesses on the receiving end. They are also IME pretty hot on checking on charities so I would be surprised if they had not already had a good rummage into KC.

Well, as we know, HMRC apparently decided that KC were doing such good work that they could just write off a £580,000 PAYE bill, and the Charities Comission received detailed reports on their lack of financial control and questionable practices in 2002, but seemed to do nothing.

Mind boggling really, but I suppose if you have s Lodi of senior cabinet members on speed dial, all prepared to have a word in somebody's ear, the normal rules don't apply.

If you have a list of senior cabinet members!

Yeah and that wouldn't happen here. Stew Leonard up in CT owned a couple of successful supermarkets and wasn't declaring income on a couple of registers. Didn't matter that he was supporting schools, hiring kids from the ghetto on a special program that paid for them to go to college. He has amazing connections with senators he went to jail for tax evasion.

It does not shock me in the least that her tax bill was waived. I went to school with the daughter of a man who owned a business employing 60 people in the middle of Wales. Paid no tax and got a slap on the wrist. That would never happen here in the us.

A group of squatters have occupied one of Kids Company's buildings and it's to be hoped they've got an ample supply of sunglasses and/or magnolia paint:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11955085/Kids-Company-headquarters-occupied-by-squatters.html

When one arch closes, another one opens:
www.standard.co.uk/news/london/volunteers-from-collapsed-kids-company-charity-open-pop-up-food-bank-a2917451.html

Seems Camila's still on the con going strong ministering to the disadvantaged motorists.

Only on mumsnet would a food bank be regarded as a con just because it's run by someone different from then.

"Different", Deo? In what way?

Do you mean that only on mumsnet would a food bank run by a proven liar be regarded as a con? Or that I personally regard it as a con because I am substantially different from Ms Batmanghelidgh in that I am not a liar, proven or otherwise?

Whatever point you're trying to make, my point is that Ms Batmanghelidgh is continuing to solicit funds from 'philanthropists' while her former enterprise is under investigation by the Charity Commission and by the police.

When that person has a proven record of playing fast and loose with the truth and financial jiggery pokery I think it is a fair inference.

If Ms Batmanghelidgh is of the opinion that feeding the 5,000 with five loaves and fishes will detract from her obsfucation of the truth about herself and her previous enterprise, she is in for a rude awakening.

As I recall, there were reports that Camila herself in fact had no actual involvement in the food bank but was trying to muscle in and claim credit for an initiative set up by some of her former volunteers and a local benefactor. Which wouldn't surprise me at all.

NAO report now out: surprise, surprise, lots of money handed over without too much concern for governance, CB claims no-one understands how sophisticated (sic) their work was.

Guardian tl;dr summary:

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/29/kids-company-ministers-warnings-david-cameron-charity

NAO website:

www.nao.org.uk/report/investigation-the-governments-funding-of-kids-company/

Holy fuck FORTY SIX MILLION POUNDS of government money. Then there's the £8 million from Coldplay and all the other celebs plus public donations. Where the hell has it gone? They got loads more from the govt than Barnado's who also help very troubled children but are a national charity and can provide evidence for what they do. Remember this is a charity that operates in two London boroughs, Liverpool and Bristol. Nowhere else. That is a huge amount of money to get through. This is beginning to look less like financial mismanagement/incompetence and more like plain fraud in which case Batshit Crazy should be prosecuted.

I'm just listening to the News, it is utterly gobsmacking. It seems from the reporting that Batshit and Yentob almost bullied and threatened the Government into coughing up, and it wasn't just Conservative, it went back as far as David Blunkett. Appalling.

The actual work that KC did in Liverpool was pretty minimal. They ran an annual theatre workshop during the summer holidays, that was it. So essentially Bristol, plus two London boroughs. I guess those funding it weren't fussed as it meant they were able to get driven down to Westminster do the photo op and be away in an hour or so.

It's a fuck-load of money just for some PR.

CB is a chancer but then there are always chancers. The civil servants seem to have been responsible and tried to turn off the tap on a number of occasions but were overruled by Labour and Tory governments. My anger is focused on those governments. I have no problem paying taxes but them blowing it this way so that insiders can all have a good ego stroke is simply a disgrace.

it went back as far as David Blunkett

At least he was spared her dress sense.

Seriously, why is Alan Yentob still employed by the BBC? He has shown a total lack of perspective in supporting this charity for so long. £46M... shocking :(