THE beleaguered head of Kids Company, Camila Batmanghelidjh, is planning legal action to prevent the government from identifying more than 3,000 illegal immigrants and asylum seekers who were on the charity’s books.
She is also facing her own legal troubles after an MP said a criminal investigation into alleged fraud was “increasingly likely” over the number of people the charity had actually helped.
“There is no way I am going to let them have the kids’ files,” said Batmanghelidjh, who has appointed solicitors to try to protect the client records of the failed charity.
“There is a risk that they will take all the asylum seekers, all the non-status people, and get the border agency round to collect them in vans. And I’m concerned about what they want to do with all these children’s information. We have got children from gangs and it’s about protecting [them]. I’ve got kids, for example, who have shared their thoughts in therapy and that could be misconstrued.”
Last week the records became the property of the Official Receiver, which has been appointed by the High Court to liquidate the charity. Kids Company failed after years of running without proper cash reserves despite receiving £37m of taxpayers’ money.
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Batmanghelidjh’s move will put pressure on Oliver Letwin, the minister in charge of the Cabinet Office, to reveal if he knew that public money was being spent on illegal immigrants. Letwin had overruled civil servants to give Kids Company an extra £3m just days before it collapsed.
Batmanghelidjh called for an independent inquiry, fearing Whitehall would cast doubt on the charity’s work to obscure the number of youngsters being failed by local councils.
She spoke as Neil Coyle, the Labour MP whose Bermondsey and Old Southwark constituency was home to a Kids Company centre, said police were likely to investigate.
“It seems increasingly likely that a criminal investigation will be needed. Suggestions of fraud will have to be investigated fully,” he said.
“Ministers will need to be clear why they swept aside the significant concerns of their officials to continue to provide significant sums of public money to an organisation that does not appear to have been helping anywhere near the number of young people it claimed.”
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He spoke after councils in London said the charity had passed on 1,692 child protection cases, with 331 categorised “high risk”.
The charity had claimed to support 36,000 vulnerable inner-city children, young people and families through schemes in London, Bristol and Liverpool, with most in the capital.
Batmanghelidjh vigorously defended her figures: “The proper number of people we see is genuinely 36,000,” she said, giving a break-down.