Justice Watchdog’s miscarriage chief executive spent thousands of pounds of public funds in a luxury French hotel while enrolling in courses at the elite business school where her organization’s chair is in office.
Karen Nohler, chief executive of the Criminal Case Review Board, is known to have been a regular attendee at INSEAD Business School in Fontainebleau for the past five years.
Kneller’s Stays included a director’s course, which was advertised for over £21,000 for 10 days of education on three trips, and a weekly programme on “digital disruption and innovation.” She also took the 3-day “Leader from the Chair” course in 2021. This cost now £7,500.
Helen Pitcher, former CCRC chair, participated in these courses, including president of the Business School Director Network Committee, and held multiple positions at INSEAD.
Pitcher resigned from CCRC this month and said she was “scapegoated” over the Andrew Malkinson incident after an independent panel determined she was no longer suitable for a chair. Malkinson spent 17 years in prison for a 2003 rape that he didn’t commit.
Now, the CCRC is expected to be exposed to new scrutiny as the organization has considered whether the relevant documents of new evidence in the case of Lucy Lett are worthy of returning to the Court of Appeal. Some staff have raised concerns that the organization’s leadership has not reached the challenge.
Kneller regularly returned to Insead, and recently stayed in the luxury rooms of an in-house 4-star hotel for a week of training in December. The Ermitage Hotel features a terrace bar overlooking Fontainebleau Forest, Fitness Center and Schash Courts.
The course fee is understood to cover the cost of staying at the hotel up to £194 per night, or CCRC cover. Some of Kneller’s INSEAD courses were in London, but the Guardian understands that most were in France.
As CEO and Accounting Officer, CCRC states that Kneller is “responsible for protecting the public funds allocated to us and ensuring adequacy and regularity in the handling of those public funds.” It’s there.
One staff member has a clear “conflict of interest” in that Kneller, who is sent to the course at the facility pitcher, is involved in “a much more expensive place than a very similar course available in the UK.” He said.
A government source said the spending “does not reflect the new government’s expectations for the best use of CCRC funding.”
A pitcher spokesman said the Department of Justice has approved a business case for Kneller to join INSEAD. They also stated that all external interests, including the pitcher’s relationship with the business school, were “fully declared in accordance with the CCRC guidelines.”
The pitcher’s role at INSEAD was president of the Director Network Committee while Kneller was on the course and chaired Director Club Ltd until October 2022. Until July 2023, Pitcher also participated in the Executive Committee of INSEAD Alumni Association and the Vice President of Global Club.
INSEAD was rated as the top business school in Europe by the 2024 Financial Times, and describes itself as the “world business school.”
In a letter of resignation, Pitcher said, “by a panel that she deems unfit to continue to oversee whether she has done enough to “challenge the performance” of the CEO and some of the staff she was responsible for. He said “main criticism” was created by the panel. for”.
In a statement to the Guardian, a pitcher spokesman was told to remove the entire senior management team when he arrived at CCRC, but found it “not feasible” and instead “senior staff.” He said he chose to teach and train. Provides the improvements seen in all assessments.
“The survey of staff (during pitcher’s tenure) has always been positive, except for the responses from a small group known to the CEO and her top team,” they said.
The Guardian revealed this month that Neller has been accused of trying to “sanitize” an independent review of the organization’s handling of the Malkinson incident. After that story broke, staff members were told by Neller at weekly briefings that “as usual, there’s nothing changed, there’s no news.”
An independent review last year showed that Watchdog missed multiple opportunities to help Malkinson. Chris Henry KC discovered that if the CCRC had a proper understanding of forensic evidence, Malkinson could have been exonerated almost a decade ago.
Krinell was the director of casework when KCRC assumed that Henry had described as a “very poor” job on Malkinson’s first application, which overturned his beliefs. The major law describes her position as “completely unacceptable” over 20 years after the organization.
Kneller and CCRC were asked to comment. A government spokesman said: “This training course was fully funded from within the CCRC budget. Training expenditures over £10,000 ARM length must be approved by the sponsoring department and then approved by the Cabinet Office. ”
