Prince Charles accepted £1m from family of Osama bin Laden
It's been revealed the Prince had a private meeting in London with bin Laden’s half-brothers, and resisted pleas from several advisers to return the money.
The Prince of Wales accepted a £1 million ($1.75 million) payment from the family of Osama bin Laden, The Sunday Times can reveal.
Prince Charles secured the money from Bakr bin Laden, the patriarch of the wealthy Saudi family, and his brother Shafiq. Both men are half-brothers of Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qa’ida who masterminded the September 11 attacks.
Charles, 73, had a private meeting with Bakr, 76, at Clarence House in London on October 30, 2013, two years after Osama bin Laden was killed by US special forces in Pakistan.
The future king agreed to the donation despite the initial objections of advisers at Clarence House and the Prince of Wales Charitable Fund (PWCF), where the money was ultimately deposited.
According to sources, several of Charles’s advisers, including at least one trustee, pleaded with him in person to return the money.
One of his household staff said it would cause national outrage if the news leaked to the media.
They told the prince that “it would not be good for anybody” if it emerged that he had accepted money from the family of the perpetrator of the worst terrorist attack in history.
A second adviser also urged the prince to return the money. They told the prince he would suffer serious reputational damage if his name appeared in the same sentence as the terrorist, who was responsible for the murder of 67 Britons alongside thousands of Americans on 9/11.
One source said: “The fact that a member of the highest level of the British establishment was choosing to broker deals with a name and a family that not only rang alarm bells, but abject horror around the world … why would you do this? What good reason is there to do this?”
They added: “I just didn’t feel any member of the British royal family should be involved in that sort of undertaking.”
Another palace insider said the “great fear” was that the payment would undermine Charles and the charity’s reputation, saying: “There are other sources of money in the world.” However, Charles was said to have felt it would be too embarrassing to hand the money back to the brothers and feared that they would suspect the reason. It is understood that one household staff member believes they were “very vociferous” with the prince but were “shouted down”.
Another adviser to Charles is said to have implored the prince to return the money. Their words caused “great” concern in the palace, but were apparently ignored.
One source said they remembered every second of a conversation in which Charles was told to hand the money back.
In response to inquiries, Sir Ian Cheshire, chairman of PWCF, said the donation was agreed “wholly” by the five trustees at the time. Those were: Dame Amelia Fawcett, a financier who chairs Kew Gardens; Sir Michael Rake, the former chairman of BT; John Varley, the former Barclays chief executive; Kenneth Wilson, an academic; and William Nye, then Charles’s principal private secretary. A source acknowledged that one trustee, identified as Varley, raised “sensible” concerns before a “full board decision” was made.
Asked when approval was given, a charity source said this took place after the funds were deposited in the PWCF’s bank account at Coutts, where they were allegedly placed on hold pending a later discussion. The source claimed this was consistent with Charity Commission rules. They would not say what these were. A Clarence House source insisted that Charles’s aides were not dismayed by the Bin Laden donation, that nobody was “shouted down” and that decisions on whether to accept money fell within the remit of trustees.
There is no suggestion that either Bakr or Shafiq bin Laden has sponsored or been involved in acts of terrorism.
As half-brothers they are related to Osama bin Laden through their father: Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, a Yemeni-born billionaire who became the wealthiest non-royal Saudi after founding the BinLadin Group, a Jeddah-based construction conglomerate. He died in a plane crash aged 59 in 1967, when Osama was ten years old. Bakr took over the company, but fell out of favour with the Saudi monarchy in 2015 after an accident at one of his projects resulted in the deaths of 100 people.
Two years later, Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, known as MBS, rounded up Bakr and two of his other brothers, Saad and Salah, during an anti-corruption drive and held them in detention at the Ritz Carlton. Bakr was released last year.
The bin Laden family’s relationship with the prince’s charities has never previously been disclosed, and does not appear in public documents. Charities are not required to disclose their supporters.
The disclosures come a month after this newspaper revealed that Charles accepted a suitcase containing euros 1 million in cash from Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, also known as HBJ, the former prime minister of Qatar.
They will lead to new questions about the conduct and personal judgment of the prince. In the past, the prince’s spokesman has claimed that all of his charities “operate independently of the prince himself in relation to all decisions around fundraising” and that their trustees “are responsible for all operational and governance duties”. Charles has no official role at the PWCF, which claims to consult him from “time to time”. Trustees have a legal and fiduciary obligation to maintain a charity’s independence and safeguard its reputation. They are also required to conduct due diligence on donations.
The Charity Commission brushed off calls to investigate the HBJ donations, even after Cheshire, filed a serious incident report. Cheshire also told the BBC it was unlikely they would have accepted the cash donations today (Sunday) because of anti-money-laundering regulations.
The regulator justified its inaction by saying that PWCF gave ample assurances. The Commission is likely to face fresh calls to take action in light of the bin Laden disclosures. Its enforcement powers range from replacing trustees to dissolving a charity.
The PWCF dismissed any suggestions of poor management in relation to the suitcases of cash handed to Charles by HBJ. Cheshire recently told the Third Sector website: “It is disappointing that over 40 years of our charitable grants, totalling over pounds 70 million to various good causes, should be overshadowed by unfounded suggestions of improper management.”
It is not the first time that Charles has been embroiled in a scandal involving Saudi donors. Last year, The Sunday Times revealed he handed a CBE to Jeddah-based Saudi businessman, Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz, in a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace. Aides told Mahfouz’s representatives he would receive a “special friendship” and an honour if he gave millions in donations. The matter is at the centre of an investigation by the Metropolitan Police. Charles, who had held undisclosed meetings with Mahfouz in London and Riyadh, denied any knowledge of the sale of the honour.
Nor is it the first instance in which the prince has been embroiled with the bin Laden family. He generated headlines after it emerged he had dined with Bakr to discuss the Islamic faith in October 2001, just two weeks after the 9/11 attack. According to an account of their initial meeting in 2000, the pair were introduced by Prince Khalid Al-Faisal Al-Saud, third of eight sons of the late King Faisal bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, during a fundraising dinner for the Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies, of which Charles is patron. He is widely reported to have inquired of Bakr: “What’s your brother up to these days?
The prince’s meeting with Bakr took place because of his patronage of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, according to the court circular, the official list of royal engagements.
Cheshire said: “The donation from Sheik Bakr Bin Laden in 2013 was carefully considered by PWCF Trustees at the time. Due diligence was conducted, with information sought from a wide range of sources, including government. The decision to accept the donation was taken wholly by the Trustees. Any attempt to suggest otherwise is misleading and inaccurate.”
A Clarence House spokeswoman said: “The Prince of Wales’ Charitable Fund has assured us that thorough due diligence was undertaken in accepting this donation. The decision to accept was taken by the charity’s Trustees alone and any attempt to characterise it otherwise is false.”
The Times
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