Mark Hollingsworth, Author at Mark Hollingsworth

28 08, 2021

Charles for sale: Prince’s charity orders a probe as it’s revealed fixers offered wealthy donors dinner with him and a stay at Dumfries House for £100,000

2023-05-22T22:34:56+00:00By Mark Hollingsworth|Categories: Royal Family, UK|

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.

24 02, 2021

MI5 and the BBC: Stamping the ‘Christmas Tree’ Files

2023-05-22T22:35:01+00:00By Mark Hollingsworth|Categories: MI5 and the BBC, UK|

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.

22 01, 2021

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH ABOUT THE OLIGARCHS

2023-05-22T22:35:14+00:00By Mark Hollingsworth|Categories: Russian Oligarchs|

6.56 p.m., Wednesday 3 March 2004. A brand new white six-seater £1.5 million Agusta A109E helicopter lands under an overcast sky at Battersea heliport in south-west London. Waiting impatiently on the tarmac and clutching his two unregistered Vodafones is a broad-shouldered forty-five-year-old British lawyer named Stephen Curtis. He is not in the best of moods.

28 12, 2020

ARMS AND THE MAN

2023-05-22T22:34:47+00:00By Mark Hollingsworth|Categories: Mark Thatcher, UK|

"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"

2 12, 2020

BORIS JOHNSON’S FATHER AND THE MI6 CONNECTION

2023-05-22T22:36:51+00:00By Mark Hollingsworth|Categories: UK|

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.

5 11, 2020

TRACING DIRTY MONEY

2021-03-10T17:39:45+00:00By Mark Hollingsworth|Categories: Tracing Dirty Money|

“Follow the money” was the whispered comment by Deep Throat in an underground car park to the Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in 1973 during the Watergate investigation. Today this famous phrase remains as important as ever as billions of pounds are increasingly being stolen, laundered and hidden by dictators, oligarchs and fraudsters.

19 10, 2020

HOW TO COUNTER THE RUSSIAN THREAT

2023-05-22T22:37:01+00:00By Mark Hollingsworth|Categories: Russia and Putin|

While she was Home Secretary Theresa May was briefed very discreetly by a senior former MI6 officer who had been stationed in Moscow during the turbulent 1990s when corruption and contract killing was rampant. The spy delivered a chilling message: Russian organised crime was active in the UK and London was a haven for Russian oligarchs to hide and protect their ill-gotten gains.

1 10, 2020

TRUMP AND THE OFFSHORE WORLD

2023-05-22T22:37:06+00:00By Mark Hollingsworth|Categories: Trump, USA|Tags: more_investigations|

When Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of being a serial tax dodger and not paying income tax for decades during the 2016 Presidential election campaign, he brazenly replied: “That makes me smart”. The former President openly brags about using aggressive tax avoidance schemes. “I fight like hell to pay as little as possible”, he said last year. And his then campaign manager Corey Lewandowski confirmed his boss’ approach to tax: “Every deduction possible – he fights for every single dollar”.

21 09, 2020

SAUDI BABYLON – Torture, Corruption and Cover-Up Inside the House of Saud

2023-05-22T22:37:10+00:00By Mark Hollingsworth|Categories: Saudi Royal Family, UK|Tags: more_investigations|

‘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.’

About Mark Hollingsworth