The Insolvency Service has written to the former trustees and chief executive of Kids Company, telling them that the Business Secretary will bring court proceedings to ban them from being company directors.
London-based children's charity Kids Company - registered on Companies House as Keeping Kids Company - collapsed in the summer of 2015 and the Insolvency Service was appointed to wind it up.
In a statement this afternoon a spokesman said: “We can confirm that the Insolvency Service has written to the former directors of Keeping Kids Company informing them that the Business Secretary intends to bring proceedings to have them disqualified from running or controlling companies for periods of between two-and-a-half and six years.
“As this matter will now be tested in the court it is not appropriate to comment further.”
Proceedings will name all the company directors at the time of collapse, including its chair Alan Yentob. It will also name Camila Batmanghelidjh, the charity's founder and chief executive.
Batmanghelidjh was not formally a director, but proceedings will allege that she acted as a de facto director.
The other eight directors who will be named in proceedings are Sunetra Devi Atkinson, Erica Jane Bolton, Richard Gordonn Handover, Vincent Gerald O’Brien, Francesca Mary Robinson, Jane Tyler and Andrew Webster.
Yentob is currently a director of I am Curious… Production, a television production company of which he’s sole director and is a trustee of the Arena Foundation - a small HIV charity.
Handover is currently chair Dauntsey's School, a Wiltshire independent school. Bolton is a trustee of Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art, which is a charity that showcases the work of young artists with an income of £800,000. None of the others are listed as trustees of any other charities.
Batmanghelidjh does not have any current directorships.
Trustees have previously indicated that they will defend any court action to ban them as company directors.
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