AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST
The Queen rarely – if ever – accepts invitations to dinner at private houses, no matter how grand. But in the summer of 2014 the oil and gas rich Gulf state of Qatar became the first ‘official partner’ of Royal Ascot and secured branding rights for the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II stakes. The Qataris also agreed to pay for the upkeep of the Castle of Mey which is owned by the royal family.
'£200k of my donation to Charles' charity has been effectively STOLEN': Pressure on Prince and his aides grows as furious banker claims 'gift' to royal's Scottish project was declined after ethics committee branded him unsuitable - but NOT fully returned'
Giorgi Rtskhiladze claims he was not paid for arranging space rocket-launch rights for OneWeb in Kazakhstan
Foreign affairs committee chairman Tom Tugendhat is a shareholder in Beauhurst
A glamorous Belarusian investment banker can today be revealed as a central figure in a scheme to sell access to the Prince of Wales in exchange for donations to his charities.
A major ethics investigation was last night launched into an extraordinary ‘cash for access’ scheme involving Prince Charles, which has been uncovered by The Mail on Sunday. A bombshell email reveals in excruciating detail how wealthy donors could pay £100,000 to secure a lavish dinner with the Prince of Wales and an overnight stay at Dumfries House, his country mansion in Scotland. The payments were intended for Charles’s charity ventures, but the email details how fixers would pocket up to 25 per cent of the fees.
A major ethics investigation was last night launched into an extraordinary ‘cash for access’ scheme involving Prince Charles, which has been uncovered by The Mail on Sunday. A bombshell email reveals in excruciating detail how wealthy donors could pay £100,000 to secure a lavish dinner with the Prince of Wales and an overnight stay at Dumfries House, his country mansion in Scotland. The payments were intended for Charles’s charity ventures, but the email details how fixers would pocket up to 25 per cent of the fees.
If ever there was an example of ‘security’ factors being used as a pretext for political vetting, it is at the BBC. When their security procedures were revealed in 1985, the corporation said that vetting was restricted to a relatively small number of people who had access to ‘sensitive information’. But in reality a large number of BBC employees – ranging from Graduate Trainees and journalists to arts producers and drama directors – were vetted by MI5 via the Personnel Department.
"Mark Thatcher was trying to cash in on the Al-Yamamah deal . . . In the arms business we met many people, royal hangers on. We called them ‘Black Princes’ and sometimes they had to be bought off . . . Thatcher was acting in the same way, as a kind of British Black Prince, but it was surely not the proper role for a British prime minister’s son"
The MI6 career of Boris Johnson's father, Stanley, was short-lived but his memoirs did reveal one insight into the secret world that has long been believed - that MI6 officers were given legal immunity to commit crimes.
‘You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of your international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world.’