The collection of letters Prince of Wales wrote to the former chief of the American Foundation shed fresh light on his controversial funding efforts.
Cash shows how closely Charles was involved in trying to secure donations from wealthy donors. This is in contrast to the official claim that Clarence House protects itself from such decisions.
His characteristically clear but spider handwritten communication with Robert Higdon was a major collector of royal memorabilia when he was the managing director of the Prince of Wales Foundation USA. For sale by.
Nineteen letters show that he was deeply interested in funding, and it took time to write about tactics on Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve.
Cash shows how closely Charles was involved in trying to secure donations from wealthy donors.
For one thing, he complains about throwing a Clarence House supper before potential donors promise money.
Previously, Charles’ courtier said that his charity was “running independently of the prince himself in all financing decisions” and that “it is the trustee responsible for all running and governing obligations.” We have issued a statement claiming that there is.
Last week it was revealed that the prince received £ 2.58 million in cash from Qatar’s Shake. This includes a € 1 million payment in a suitcase personally delivered at Clarence House in 2015 and another cash donation in a bag from a luxury grocery store. Fortnum & Mason.
All money was handed over to the Bank of Coutts and deposited in the account of his charity, the Prince of Wales Foundation. There is no suggestion of cheating. The prince’s office now says that cash payments “will never happen again.”
Higdon ran the Prince of Wales Foundation based in Washington from 1997 to 2011. He raised millions of dollars for charity, but his high salary (reportedly £ 500,000 a year) was criticized. Further controversy arose by introducing American financing methods into the previously fairly stable and controlled royal world.
Nineteen letters, each for sale for $ 3,500 (£ 3,000), were written between 1997 and 2008. In a letter dated December 31, 2008, the wealthy philanthropist Lee Annenberg, a former U.S. Walter Annenberg widow, said the British ambassador was the visitor center of May Castle, the Scottish estate of the late Queen Mother. Donated only $ 100,000 (£ 82,000) to.
He writes: Last plea to see if we can get a little closer to $ 1.4 million [was] Do you want Please forgive my worries, especially on New Year’s Day. But I feel it’s thanks to my beloved grandmother to do the best possible work in this building. “
In another letter on note paper from Gloucestershire’s private residence, Highgrove House, dated June 21, 1997, he organized a pre-arranged dinner for all charitable donations. I admire Mr. Higdon.
Charles writes:
He also wrote about a conversation with two guests after dinner. They said they were “waiting for a huge amount of personal wealth to be utilized …”
In the same letter, the prince reveals that a guest “tweet something about the lack of a child to deposit all his money and how interested he is in my foundation.” And he talks about collecting money by selling his watercolor prints.
His characteristically clear but spider handwritten communication with Robert Higdon was a major collector of royal memorabilia when he was the managing director of the Prince of Wales Foundation USA. For sale by
The letter contains a memorandum dated August 14, 2004, complaining that the prince must attend dinner without securing a charitable donation in advance.
“I hope they will listen to you about not having dinner unless people promise to help in advance,” he told Higdon. “Recently, when I heard that I had to have a supper at Clarence House, of course, it was a waste of my time, so I’m worried I might not have been amused!”
Los Angeles-based collector Alicia Carroll, who put up the letter for sale, bought the letter from Mr. Higdon’s mansion shortly after his death in 2018 at the age of 58. She became her 92,000 email subscribers.
Higdon, who was hired to boost Prince Charles’ name as an American benefactor, previously worked for the US branch of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation. He also collaborated with Charles’ former servant Michael Fawcett, who is at the center of a police investigation into the exposure of Sunday’s mail, which offered to help Saudi tycoons gain both British citizenship and the Order. Did.
A Clarence House spokesman said: However, the decision to accept a donation is a matter of the charity involved, not of the prince himself.