No inquiry into €3m cash donations to Prince Charles’s charity
Charity regulator decides against launching
investigation into donations accepted by Prince of Wales’s Charitable
Foundation
Caroline
Davies
Wed 20 Jul
2022 19.45 BST
The Charity
Commission is to take no further action over cash donations totalling €3m accepted
by one of Prince Charles’s charities.
The charity
regulator said that it had no plans for any intervention after reports of the
donations made by a former Qatari prime minister, which were reportedly handed
over in a small suitcase and Fortnum and Mason carrier bag.
A Charity
Commission spokesperson said: “We have assessed the information provided by the
charity and have determined there is no further regulatory role for the
commission.” The commission added that it had “no concerns” about the governance
of the prince’s charity and that the trustees had submitted information, via a
serious incident report, which had given “sufficient assurance” that due
diligence had taken place.
The Sunday
Times had reported that the donations from Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim were
allegedly personally accepted by Prince Charles during three meetings between
2011 and 2015 , with the money being passed on to the Prince of Wales’s
Charitable Foundation.
The Charity
Commission had been considering whether it needed to launch a review into the
donation – but the watchdog has now said it has no plans to take any action.
Cash
donations were allowed to be accepted by charities, there were no suggestions
of any illegality, and the watchdog had concluded no further inquiries were
necessary, it said.
A senior
royal source has previously said such donations would not be accepted in the
present day: “That was then, this is now,” they said.
“Situations,
contexts change over the years,” said the royal source. “I can say with
certainty that for more than half a decade, this has not happened and it would
not happen again.”
Sir Ian
Cheshire, the chair of the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation, had
previously told the BBC that the “optics” of accepting so much cash did not
look good, but at the time it was not uncommon for wealthy people in the Middle
East to use large amounts of cash. He had added that more recent
money-laundering regulations would make it unlikely that large amounts of cash
would now be offered or accepted.
The former
Liberal Democrat minister Norman Baker had called the reported cash payments
“grubby”, and wrote to the Metropolitan police asking for these latest
allegations to be taken into account during the force’s ongoing investigation
into claims of cash for honours involving another of Charles’s charities.
Clarence
House has insisted the prince had no knowledge of the alleged offer to help a
Saudi millionaire obtain honours or British citizenship in return for a
generous donation to the Prince’s Foundation.
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Secrecy of royal wills questioned by senior officials,
documents reveal
Papers from 1970s and 1980s warn practice of sealing
wills was ‘haphazard’ with ‘slender’ legal basis
Rob Evans
and David Pegg
Tue 19 Jul
2022 16.41 BST
Senior
government officials privately believed that the practice of keeping secret the
wills of the royal family was legally questionable and even warned ministers
not to discuss it in parliament, according to official documents.
Over the
past century, high court judges have issued secret legal orders allowing the
wills of 33 members of the royal family to be kept confidential after hearings
that were held behind closed doors.
The secret
orders have meant that these members of the royal family have been exempted
from normal practice whereby the wills of British people are generally open to
be inspected.
On Monday,
the Guardian reported that the secrecy allowed the Windsor family to prevent
the public seeing how assets worth £187m at today’s prices, which are outlined
in the wills, had been distributed.
There has
been little official explanation from the judiciary, government or royal family
about why these secret orders, some of which concerned distant relatives of the
Windsors, were justified.
Official
papers discovered in the National Archives show that during private discussions
within government, a Whitehall official said in 1970 that the legal basis for
granting these orders was “rather slender”. Another official described the
practice as “somewhat haphazard”.
Other
documents show that in 1981, ministers were advised not to draw the attention
of parliamentarians to the practice of keeping secret the royal wills while a
key piece of legislation was being debated in the House of Lords.
Officials
advised ministers “not to read out” in parliament part of a document that noted
the “customary” practice of closing the Windsors’ wills.
On
Wednesday, a court of appeal case will focus attention on the long-running
practice. The Guardian is challenging a judicial decision to exclude the media
from the secret hearing that led to a ruling last year to close Prince Philip’s
will.
As with all
the other royal wills, a judge decided to close Philip’s will after a
confidential application by lawyers for the Windsors. The media were not told
about the hearing and were consequently prevented from attending or making
submissions in favour of transparency.
Philip’s
will was the latest to be kept secret in a series of rulings dating back to
1911. The rulings are contentious, since wills drawn up by Britons are usually
made public after they die. The purpose of this general right is to ensure that
assets detailed in wills are properly distributed and not exploited by
fraudsters.
Legislation
from the 19th century stipulates that the monarch’s will is kept secret.
However, no equivalent law has been passed by parliament to prevent the
publication of wills belonging to other members of the Windsor family.
‘Not to be read out’ in parliament
The
documents in the National Archives reveal official discussions behind closed
doors about the legal justification for the secrecy surrounding what was
described by a leading judge as “a special practice”.
In October
1970, a senior Whitehall official, Hume Boggis-Rolfe, told Quintin Hogg, the
then lord chancellor: “I have been able to find no authority whatever for the
sealing-up of royal wills, apart from the rather slender authority” of a clause
in a 1925 act. This he described as “the law in so far as there is any”.
This clause
stated that in general, wills were to be opened “subject to the control of the
high court”, meaning that judges could seal wills if lawyers representing a
dead person made an application. It did not define in what circumstances wills
could be closed, nor did it refer specifically to the royal family.
In his
reply, Hogg agreed that this clause was the “sole” legal basis for concealing
the royal wills.
In June
1970, an unidentified Whitehall official queried whether the practice “is valid
at all (a matter which may well be questioned one day)”. A senior official
overseeing the probate system summarised how the wills of even distant members
of the royal family had been kept secret. He admitted: “The practice of sealing
up wills has been somewhat haphazard.”
In the same
month, the royal family consulted the government about whether a junior royal’s
will could be sealed. A Whitehall official recorded that the proposal had been
dropped: “The Buckingham Palace lawyers consider that except in special
circumstances (for example, a will containing something that should not be made
public) ‘fringe’ members of the royal family need not have their wills sealed.
This should only be for HRHs [Royal Highnesses].”
In the 1981
Senior Courts Act, the government renewed the clause that gave the public the
general right to inspect wills, reiterating that this right could be curtailed
by high court judges.
Official
briefing documents advised ministers on what to say when this act was being
debated in the House of Lords. In passages marked “not to be read out” to
parliament, the documents described how it was “customary” for judges to keep
secret the wills of the royal family.
Noting that
wills drawn up by members of the public would usually be open, a civil servant
wrote: “The point is of particular significance in relation to royal wills
which in practice are frequently sealed up on the order” of a senior judge.
The civil
servant added: “The question of whether the ‘control of the high court’ may in
law be exercised to render a will unavailable for inspection remains
unanswered”.
An official
note written in 2002 shows that in private, government ministers and the
judiciary have struggled to define which members of the Windsor family should
be permitted to have their wills secret, and whether this should accorded, for
example, to just the monarch’s consort and offspring, and not obscure
relatives.
The
government declined to comment as the legal case brought by the Guardian was
being heard.
A
Buckingham Palace spokesperson said: “The treatment of wills is a matter for
the executors of estates.”
Watchdog investigates firm behind Prince
Charles’s eco-village in Scotland
Havisham Properties, owned by Tory peer Lord Brownlow,
under scrutiny after buying 11 homes on failed Knockroon development
Hannah
Summers
Sat 2 Jul
2022 23.30 BST
A charity
watchdog has confirmed it is investigating transactions by a property company
which apparently bought homes on an Ayrshire estate from a subsidiary of the
Prince’s Foundation.
The
company, Havisham Properties, is being scrutinised over the purchase of 11
properties on the Knockroon development in Scotland – originally acquired as a
piece of farmland by Prince Charles when he bought the nearby mansion, Dumfries
House.
The homes,
understood to have been bought between 2012 and 2017 for £1.7m, were originally
planned as an eco-village intended to attract jobs and revitalise the former
mining community.
A spokesman
for the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator said: “We can confirm that the
work of Havisham Group and property transactions relating to the Knockroon
development in Ayrshire forms part of our overall investigation, work on which
is ongoing.”
It follows
allegations published in the Sunday Times that Prince Charles ennobled the
businessman and owner of Havisham Properties, Lord Brownlow, after accepting
millions of pounds in donations from him.
The Tory
peer, who in 2013 was appointed as a trustee of the Prince’s Foundation, which
manages Dumfries House, helped bail Prince Charles out of the failed
eco-village project after just 31 out of 770 homes were built due to a lack of
demand. It was reported the prince hoped the project would help pay off the
£20m loan he took out to buy Dumfries House.
David
Brownlow
David Brownlow
came to prominence after funding the refurbishment of Boris Johnson’s flat.
Photograph: David Brownlow Charitable Foundation
In 2018,
after Brownlow, 58, allegedly completed his purchase of the unwanted properties
and quit as a trustee, the prince awarded him a royal honour at Buckingham
Palace.
The Tory
peer, who came to prominence after funding the controversial refurbishment of
Boris Johnson’s Downing Street flat, was made a Commander of the Victorian
Order (CVO).
“Lord
Brownlow was appointed CVO in 2018 in recognition of his role of chair of the
charity the Prince’s Foundation for Building Community,” a Prince’s Foundation
spokeswoman told the newspaper.
It follows
reports the Prince of Wales will no longer accept large cash donations for his
charities after facing criticism over claims he personally received €3m in cash
from a billionaire Qatari sheikh. The money was reportedly handed over in a
small suitcase, a holdall and Fortnum & Mason carrier bag.
The cash
was passed to the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund from Sheikh Hamad bin
Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, who was the prime minister of Qatar between 2007 and
2013.
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