The British newspaper The Sunday Times reported that in 2013 Prince Charles of Wales accepted a million pounds from Osama bin Laden’s family.
Prince Charles received money from Bakr bin Laden, the head of a wealthy Saudi family, and his brother, Osama bin Laden’s half-brothers, founder of al-Qaeda.
Charles, 73, met 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, he said. British newspaper.
Prince Charles agreed to make the donation despite initial objections from advisers from Clarence House and the Prince of Wales Charitable Foundation (PWCF), where the money was eventually donated.
According to sources, several of Charles’s advisers, including at least one confidant, personally approached him with a request to return the money.
A worker at the prince’s household said the news leak to the media would lead to national outrage, adding that they told the prince it “won’t do anyone any good” if he was found to have accepted money from the prince’s family. responsible for the worst terrorist attack in history.
The second adviser also urged the prince to return the money.
A palace insider said the “great fear” was that the payment would damage Charles’s reputation and the charity, stating “there are other sources of money in the world”.
However, Charles is said to have felt that returning the money would be too embarrassing and was afraid they would suspect why.
In July 2022, a source at the British Royal Palace revealed that cash donations to the Crown Prince’s Charitable Trust were no longer accepted.
This comes after reports and news released by the British media that former Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani donated over $3 million in cash to the Prince Charles Foundation between 2011 and 2015 in three installments, some of which were in plastic bags.
And this is not the first time there has been a fuss about financial donations to the British Crown Prince’s institutions, as last February the British Metropolitan Police launched an investigation into allegations that the Prince’s charitable foundation helped Saudi businessman Mahfouz bin Marei bin Mahfouz. receive a British medal in exchange for a donation of hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Source: British media