LONDON — Britain’s Prince Charles is dealing with extra questions over his charities after a newspaper reported that one among his funds accepted a 1 million pound ($1.2 million) donation from kin of Osama bin Laden.
The Sunday Instances reported that the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund acquired the cash in 2013 from Bakr bin Laden, patriarch of the big and rich Saudi household, and his brother Shafiq. Each are half-brothers of the previous al-Qaida chief, who was killed by U.S. particular forces in Pakistan in 2011.
The newspaper stated advisers had urged the inheritor to the throne to not take the donation.
Charles’ Clarence Home workplace disputed that however confirmed the donation had been made. It stated the choice to just accept the cash was taken by the charity’s trustees, not the prince, and “thorough due diligence was undertaken in accepting this donation.”
The fund’s chairman, Ian Cheshire, additionally stated the donation was agreed “wholly” by the 5 trustees on the time, and “any try to counsel in any other case is deceptive and inaccurate.”
The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund was based in 1979 to “rework lives and construct sustainable communities,” and provides grants to all kinds of tasks in Britain and all over the world.
Charles, 73, has confronted a sequence of claims in regards to the operation of his charities. Final month the Sunday Instances reported he had accepted luggage of money containing $3 million from Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, the previous prime minister of Qatar.
London police are presently investigating a separate allegation that individuals related to one other of the prince’s charities, the Prince’s Basis, supplied to assist a Saudi billionaire safe honors and citizenship in return for donations. Clarence Home has stated Charles had no data of any such provide.
