Naomi Campbell’s 5-year ban on serving as a U.K. charity trustee is overturned

LONDON — Supermodel Naomi Campbell won a legal challenge Thursday to overturn a five-year ban on serving as a charity trustee in England and Wales.

A three-person tribunal ruled that Campbell had been “deceived” by Bianka Hellmich, a fellow trustee in the poverty charity Fashion for Relief.

A little over a year ago, the Charity Commission, which registers and regulates charities in England and Wales, ruled that the charity Campbell founded around two decades ago was “poorly governed,” with “inadequate financial management.”

It found “multiple instances of misconduct and/or mismanagement,” and that only 8.5% of the charity’s overall expenditure went on charitable grants in a six-year period from 2016.

As a result, it barred Campbell from being a charity trustee in England and Wales for five years.

In its ruling, the tribunal confirmed there had been “serious misconduct and mismanagement” but that the “failures in the management of the charity’s finances and the misuse of its funds” resulted from Hellmich’s conduct. These, it added, were “concealed” from the 56-year-old supermodel.