Bags full of money embarrass Prince Carlo of Gaffs

Buckingham Palace puts to shame a suitcase full of money given to Prince Charles. A question of style rather than of substance. The story, which takes place many years ago, will not really be of illegal implication but of mere opportunity.

This story was revealed by the Sunday Times in yesterday’s edition. The eternal heir to the throne would have accepted a cash donation amounting to around three million euros from the Sheikh and former Premier of Qatar, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, intended to be donated to the presidency of the Prince of Wales.

Carlo received three lots of cash between 2011 and 2015 from Al Thani, who was Qatar’s premier from 2007 to 2013 and foreign minister between 1992 and 2013. The money was given to the Prince of Wales in cash and in the least suspicious form. On one occasion he kept it inside a suitcase, in another case in a bag, in yet another case in some transport bags from Fortnum & Mason, a London department store specializing in high quality food and among other things In addition, Ironically, it exclusively sells gastronomy products coming straight from the heir’s Highgrove estates to the throne. A Clarence House spokesman told the newspaper that the money was never in the possession of the Queen’s son, but “it was immediately transferred to a charity of the Prince, who put in place the necessary procedures and assured us it was through the correct procedures.” was followed”.

According to a London tabloid story, after receiving the suitcase, Carlo would have given it to two associates who had to “count the money by hand”. The royal booty probably consisted of thousands of 500 euro notes. The prince’s staff would then ask Coutts, the private bank that always dealt with the property of the monarch, to take the suitcase. And the bank deposited money into the accounts of the Prince of Wales Charitable Fund, which distributes grants to the prince’s projects and his estate in Scotland.

Another unusual thing is that meetings between the heir to the throne and the sheikh do not figure in the list of official commitments of members of the royal family. But it is also true that the gift rules stipulate that the royal family may accept checks on behalf of a charity, but it says nothing about cash. The handover passes are believed to have been taken during meetings between two people, including a private one-on-one at Clarence House in 2015.

Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani is one of the richest people in the world. He has several properties in London, with personal investments and controls by the Qatari Wealth Fund, for example in the Shard skyscraper, Harrod’s department store and the Intercontinental London Park Lane. Al Thani is also the owner of one of the richest football clubs in the world, Paris Saint-Germain.

As the Sunday Times specifies, nothing suggests that exchanging large sums of money is illegal, but the case certainly casts many shadows on the prince’s management of the charity. There was certainly no need for this kind of media exposure for the man at Buckingham Palace who, with his mother’s growing age, makes the eyes of the United Kingdom (and the world) increasingly on him.