A fresh saga has rocked the Royal Family with Prince Charles at the centre of an alleged seven-figure payment from the family of Osama bin Laden.
According to a report by the UK Sunday Times, the Prince of Wales allegedly accepted Shs3.8 billion (£1 million) from the Saudi family.
The paper reported that the 73-year-old allegedly received the money from Bakr bin Laden, the patriarch of the wealthy Saudi family, and his brother Shafiq.
The two are half-brothers of Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda who masterminded the September 11 attacks.
The donation is reported to have followed a private meeting with Bakr, 76, at Clarence House in London on October 30, 2013, two years after Bin Laden was killed by US special forces in Pakistan.
The future king, it is reported, agreed to the donation despite the initial objections of advisers at the Clarence House and the Prince of Wales Charitable Fund (PWCF), where the money was eventually deposited.
The UK paper revealed that several of Charles’s advisers, including at least one trustee, pleaded with him in person to return the money.
However, it is said he felt it would be too embarrassing to hand the money back to the brothers and feared that they would suspect the reason.
Nonetheless, the pleas by the advisers to have the donation returned, according to the report, were seemingly ignored.
A spokesperson for the Clarence House has in a statement, however, rejected the allegations, saying that due diligence was taken before the donation was accepted.
“The Prince of Wales’ Charitable Fund has assured us that thorough due diligence was undertaken in accepting this donation,” reads the statement.
“The decision to accept was taken by the charity’s trustees alone and any attempt to characterise it otherwise is false.”
The new revelation comes after another trouble in the Royal Family, which saw Prince Andrew caught up in a sex abuse lawsuit over his friendship with the late billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
In January this year, Queen Elizabeth stripped the Prince of his royal patronages and banning him from using the HRH title even though he had stepped down from his official royal duties in 2019.
Later in February, Prince Andrew reached an out-of-court settlement with Virginia Giuffre, Epstein’s victim, stating that he “regrets his association with Epstein” but denied the sexual assault allegations.
In 2019, federal prosecutors charged Mr Epstein with one count of sex trafficking of a minor and one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking.
After pleading not guilty to the crimes, Mr Epstein was denied bail, and was later found dead in his Manhattan jail cell.
By Nation.Africa