Prince Charles Charity Probed For Allegedly Offering Honors, Royal Favors In Exchange For Donations

The Prince of Wales is facing the prospect of being interviewed by the Metropolitan Police after his charitable body, The Prince’s Foundation, got embroiled in a cash-for-honors scandal after a Saudi donor was offered help to secure a knighthood.

On Wednesday, the Met confirmed it received a letter in September concerning the issue, announcing that its Special Enquiry Team decided to commence a probe under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925 following an assessment process, the BBC noted.

The announcement came a day just after Charles’s brother, the embattled Duke of York, secured an out-of-court settlement with Virginia Giuffre, who accused him of sexually assaulting her when she was 17, which Prince Andrew persistently denies.

In September, Republic, an anti-monarchy pressure group, contacted the Metropolitan police, calling on Charles and Michael Fawcett, former chief executive of the foundation, to be interrogated. Accordingly, the former Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker asked Scotland Yard to probe the allegations against Fawcett.

The Prince’s Foundation then ordered an independent probe into allegations of cash-for-honors and later found evidence that Charles’s former closest aide, Fawcett, had “communications and coordination” with “so-called "fixers" regarding honorary nominations for a donor between 2014 and 2018.”

According to al Jazeera, Fawcett resigned as CEO of the Prince’s Foundation in the wake of the scandal. He reportedly promised Saudi billionaire Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz a knighthood and British citizenship in return for wiring massive donations to restoration projects of particular interest to Charles.

Since then, questions have been raised as to whether the longest-serving heir to the British throne will be called in for questioning since while he is president of the foundation, the Prince is not involved with its governance.

“We want to know that Prince Charles himself will be investigated along with Michael Fawcett,” Graham Smith, the chief executive of Republic, said per The Guardian. “So we hope the investigation will be carried out without fear or favor and will be as thorough as it needs to be.”

Meanwhile, Clarence House reiterated its previous statement that: “The Prince of Wales had no knowledge of the alleged offer of honors or British citizenship based on the donation to his charities.”