Saudi national Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz’s large contributions notably funded the renovation of several royal residences, including Dumfries House, in Scotland.
London, August 1 (RHC)-- Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, accepted a £1 million ($1.19 million, 1.21 million euro) donation from the family of the deceased Saudi terrorist, Osama bin Laden, The Sunday Times reports.
Charles, who is the longest-serving heir apparent to the throne in British history, personally secured the 1 million pound donation for his charity from the bin Laden family in 2013, the newspaper added.
The decision to accept the donation money from the terrorist's half brothers, Bakr and Shafiq, was made despite objections from his advisors. They had told the Prince of Wales that if word about the donation leaked out, it would cause a national outrage and damage to the British crown's reputation, the paper reported.
“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?” a source told the paper.
Charles, 73-years-old, agreed to the donation to the Prince of Wales Charitable Fund (PWCF) when he met with Bakr at Clarence House in London in 2013. Ian Cheshire, chairman of PWCF, said the donation was agreed by the five trustees at the time.
British police in February launched an investigation into another of Charles's charitable foundations over claims of a cash-for-honors scandal involving a Saudi businessman.
Charles was reported to have also accepted other controversial donations to his charity from a Qatari politician with the cash delivered from 2011 to 2015 in duffel bags, a suitcase, and several branded shopping bags from Fortnum & Mason upmarket department store.
The head of The Prince's Foundation resigned last year after an internal investigation into the allegations. Neither Charles nor other members of the British royal family who had ties with Nazis or were entangled in numerous sexual affairs have been strangers to controversy and scandals.
From the 1970s to 90s, Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles were in a publicly-acknowledged illicit affair, which eventually resulted in Queen Elizabeth forcing the Prince and Princess Diana to get divorced in 1995.
Another one of the many scandals was when the Queen's second son, the Duke of York, was embroiled in a sex-slave relationship with an underage girl. Buckingham Palace initially tried to defend the "honor" of Prince Andrew and quash the spreading news. When the facts came out eventually, Andrew was stripped of all his titles by the Queen.
