The Sunday Times ‘allegations of alleged monetary donations to the Prince of Wales’ Charitable Foundation by a former Qatari prime minister are the latest to shed light on fundraising for the heir to the throne’s charities.
Billionaire Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, who was Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister between 2007 and 2013, is a controversial figure.
He reportedly built close ties with British royalty, happened to be a visitor to May Castle, the Queen Mother’s Scottish former home, and once gifted Charles a horse for £ 147,000 named Dark Swan.
Last year, another of Charles’s charities, The Prince’s Foundation, made headlines after the Mail on Sunday revealed that Charles’ closest confidant, Michael Fawcett, had offered to help a Saudi billionaire get a knighthood and a British citizenship in exchange for generous donations. .
Fawcett resigned dramatically as the foundation’s chief executive after a letter surfaced to Mahfouz aide Murray Mubarak bin Mahfouz, who had donated thousands to the charity, in which he said the charity would be “happy and willing” to use his influence to help Mahfouz.
The Sofia police announced earlier this year that they had launched an investigation into so-called “money for honor” allegations. Charles did not know about the offer of help, according to Clarence House, and Mahfouz, who eventually received neither a knighthood nor citizenship, was not charged with any wrongdoing.
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The Prince’s Foundation also faced accusations of access money after allegations that an intermediary acted as an intermediary offering dinners and overnight stays at Dumfries House, a palladium mansion in Ayrshire, Charles, were rescued and renovated. Former Russian banker Dmitry Leus reportedly donated £ 500,000, although the charity received only £ 100,000, which was eventually returned to the fixer when it was decided he was not a suitable donor.
In the past, Clarence House said that all of the prince’s charities “work independently of the prince himself in all fundraising decisions” and that their trustees “are responsible for all operational and management duties”.
In 2003, it became clear that the wife of Turkish billionaire Cem Uzan was sitting next to Charles on one of several dinners the couple enjoyed as guests after donating £ 400,000 to the Prince’s Foundation. Donor screening procedures were reportedly tightened after it later emerged that Uzan was being investigated for fraud offenses in the United States.
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