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Prince Charles is said to have been given €3m in
Qatari cash
Money was passed immediately to one of the prince’s
charities, says Clarence House
David
Connett
Sat 25 Jun
2022 23.02 BST
The Prince
of Wales accepted bags containing millions of euros in cash during meetings
with a senior Qatari politician, according to a report.
Prince
Charles was said to have been given a total of €3m (£2.6m) during meetings with
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al-Thani, the former prime minister of Qatar.
The cash
was handed to the heir to the British throne in a suitcase on one occasion, a
holdall on another, as well as in Fortnum & Mason carrier bags, the
up-market department store which holds a Royal Warrant to supply the prince’s
household with groceries.
The
handovers are alleged to have occurred during meetings between the two men,
including a private one-to-one meeting at Clarence House in 2015, it was
claimed.
In a
statement, a Clarence House spokesman said the money given during the 2015
meeting was “passed immediately to one of the prince’s charities who carried
out the appropriate covenants and assured us that all the correct processes
were followed”.
The
suitcase containing the cash was given to two of Charles’ advisers who are said
to have hand-counted the money. Palace aides are said to have asked Coutts, the
private bank which acts for the royal family, to collect the cash.
Each
payment was deposited into the accounts of the Prince of Wales’s Charitable
Fund (PWCF). There is no suggestion the payments were illegal, the Sunday Times
reported today.
The sheikh,
one of the richest people in the world, was dubbed the “man who bought London”
after he used his wealth, as well as his influence on the Qatari Wealth fund,
to make huge investments in London including the Shard, Harrods and the
InterContinental London Park Lane. He is the owner of one of the world’s
richest football clubs, Paris Saint-Germain.
There is no
evidence the sheikh did not intend the monies to go to the charity and Hamad
was unavailable for comment, it was reported.
The chair
of the trustees to the charity confirmed to the newspaper that the 2015
donation was made and then the trustees, who have a legal duty to protect the
charity’s reputation, “discussed the governance and donor relationship,
(confirming that the donor was a legitimate and verified counterparty) and our
auditors signed off on the donation after a specific enquiry during the audit.
There was no failure of governance”.
The charity
is said to have confirmed the 2015 donation was made in cash at the “donor’s
choice”.
Charles and
Hamad are said to have a relationship going back several decades. In 2010,
Charles was said to have lobbied Hamad to shelve the £3bn redevelopment of
London’s Chelsea Barracks – writing a letter in which he told the country’s
then prime minister that the state-backed Qatari Diar’s proposed
steel-and-glass design “made my heart sink”. Charles later met the emir of
Qatar for tea at Clarence House where the topic was raised once again. Qatar
subsequently pulled the plans, prompting the Candy brothers, who were
overseeing the development, to launch a £81m lawsuit. In it, they accused Qatar
of caving in to the prince’s demands.
The latest
claims come at an embarrassing time for the prince. Clarence House has rebutted
claims of a “cash-for-access” culture in his organisation, with the
Metropolitan Police and Charity Commission investigating fundraising practices,
including the sale of honours. It has been alleged that Charles’s closest
confidant, Michael Fawcett, secured an honour for a Saudi billionaire.
Fawcett
resigned from his position in Charles’s inner circle in March 2003, after a
report by Sir Michael Peat identified mismanagement at Clarence House. The Peat
inquiry found that Fawcett had accepted “numerous gifts in the course of his
royal service”, but cleared him of any financial impropriety. Fawcett continued
to work for Charles on a freelance basis as a fixer and party planner.
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