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Naomi Campbell is free to serve as a charity trustee once again after a London tribunal overturned her five-year ban, finding that the worst wrongdoing at her former foundation, Fashion for Relief, was hidden from her by a colleague.
Campbell launched Fashion for Relief in 2005 to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. The Charity Commission — the givemnment department that regulates and registers charities in England and Wales — disqualified her and two other trustees in 2024, after an inquiry found donations had been spent on luxury hotels and spa treatments, while only 8.5 percent of the charity’s spending went on charitable grants.
Campbell appealed, alleging that fellow trustee Bianka Hellmich, a lawyer, forged her signature and impersonated her using a fake email address. Hellmich, who the inquiry found received more than £290,000 in unauthorised consultancy payments, denies the allegations. But on Thursday, the First-Tier Tribunal sided with Campbell. “Ms Hellmich deceived Ms Campbell, used forged documents and a false email address purporting to belong to her, and also deceived professional advisers and the Commission,” the panel said in its ruling. “Ms Campbell was not involved in, and did not know of, that conduct.”
The tribunal also accepted Campbell was unaware that €4,386 in hotel charges from a 2018 trip to the south of France — covering room service, spa treatments, and cigarettes — had been billed to the charity.
They did not let her off the hook entirely, though. “[She] did share ultimate responsibility for the charity’s failure to keep proper minutes and file its accounts on time”, the tribunal said, according to Reuters.
“Giving back has been part of who I am, so having that questioned hurt deeply,” Campbell said in a statement reported by BBC News. “Now I can get back to what matters most to me: being there for the people and communities I’ve always wanted to serve.”
Her lawyer, Michelle Duncan, told WWD the decision was a “significant vindication”.
Hellmich has previously rejected Campbell’s account. “Her claims are a device carefully designed to paint her as a victim, while scapegoating a so-called friend,” she told the Financial Times in April 2025, as quoted by BBC News.
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