Naomi Campbell Overturns Charity Trustee Ban as Tribunal Points to Concealment

Naomi Campbell has won her appeal against a five-year ban on serving as a charity trustee in England and Wales. The Guardian reported the First-tier Tribunal decision on 1 October 2026.

The ban was imposed in 2024. The Charity Commission, the regulator for charities in England and Wales, had found mismanagement of funds at Fashion for Relief, the charity Campbell founded. It opened its investigation in 2021. The five-year disqualification order barred Campbell from serving as a charity trustee, a board member with legal responsibility for a charity, in that jurisdiction.

Campbell challenged the order at the First-tier Tribunal, the appeal body that reviews decisions by public regulators, earlier in 2026. The appeal was heard over four days in June 2026. The panel that ruled in her favour comprised judges Joe Neville and James Armstrong-Holmes sitting with a third member.

The tribunal did not clear the charity's management. It found serious misconduct and mismanagement in the administration of Fashion for Relief. The ban is gone. Responsibility was assigned elsewhere.

On the tribunal's findings, the most serious issues, including unauthorised payments to Bianka Hellmich, failures in management of finances and misuse of funds, resulted from Hellmich's conduct and were concealed from Campbell. The tribunal found Campbell was not involved in and did not know of Hellmich's misconduct. It further found Hellmich used forged documents and deceived professional advisers and the Charity Commission.

The earlier inquiry set out specific uses of charity funds outside charitable purposes. Funds paid for Campbell's stay at a five-star hotel in Cannes, including spa treatments, room service and cigarettes. A trustee was paid £316,000 in unauthorised fees and travel expenses from Fashion for Relief funds. Save the Children and the Mayor's Fund for London, for whose benefit Fashion for Relief events were organised, received only a tiny fraction of the proceeds.

All three trustees faced disqualification for different periods. Hellmich was disqualified for nine years. Veronica Chou was disqualified for four years. In UK government material titled 'Charity Inquiry: Fashion for Relief', Miss Naomi Campbell is recorded as 'Trustee A'. GOV.UK now marks that inquiry page as Withdrawn, and notes orders referred to in the material were revoked on 25 March 2022 and 27 April 2022.

The broader context here is about knowledge and control, not title alone. Trustees carry collective responsibility, and serious mismanagement can still bring regulatory action even where charitable intent is not in dispute. A finding that the central wrongdoing was actively hidden by a fellow trustee, through forgery and deception of advisers and the regulator, weakens the basis for a personal ban against a trustee who did not take part. That distinction accounts for the three outcomes: nine years, four years, and no disqualification.

Looking at what this means for enforcement, the decision leaves the Commission's record on misuse intact while limiting its reach against Campbell personally. For charities, the points to weigh are delegation, oversight, and proof of what a trustee knew. Concealment, as accepted by the tribunal, answered the assumption that a founder-trustee must have known about or approved unauthorised payments and poor financial controls. The case does not change the Commission's power to investigate, to publish inquiry reports, or to seek disqualification where mismanagement is found.