Naomi Campbell overturns charity watchdog ban

Former supermodel Naomi Campbell won a legal challenge on Thursday to overturn a five-year ban on being a charity trustee after a panel accepted she had been the victim of deception.

A UK tribunal ruling said there had been mismanagement at her Fashion for Relief organisation but she “was not involved” and “did not know” about it.

The ruling said Campbell, 56, shared responsibility for the charity failing to file its accounts on time but that this did not mean she was unfit to be a charity trustee in the circumstances of the case, “including the sustained deception” she faced.

Lawyers for Campbell told the tribunal a fake email account had been used to impersonate the former supermodel.

The Charity Commission watchdog banned Campbell in 2024 from running a charity for five years after identifying “multiple instances of misconduct”.

But she labelled the finding “deeply flawed”.

Reacting to the ruling, the Charity Commission said its disqualification of Campbell had been made on the “evidence available to us at the time”.

It said the ruling recognised that the commission, Campbell and others had been “subject to sophisticated deception”.

Campbell founded the charity in 2005, aiming to harness the fashion industry to relieve poverty and advance health and education, by making grants to other organisations and giving resources towards global disasters.

It was dissolved and removed from the register of charities in 2024.