Prince Charles’ closest aide Michael Fawcett is forced to resign after damning cash for favours note

The Prince of Wales’s closest aide dramatically resigned last night after The Mail on Sunday exposed how he offered to help secure a knighthood and British citizenship for a billionaire Saudi donor to Charles’s charity.

Michael Fawcett stepped down as chief executive of The Prince’s Foundation after being confronted with a letter in which he said the Royal charity would be ‘happy and willing’ to use its influence to help businessman Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz, who had given it hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The charity said that Mr Fawcett – arguably the Prince’s most trusted aide – had ‘offered to step down temporarily’ while its trustees investigate.

A former Palace official said the loss of Mr Fawcett was ‘an earthquake’ to the future King. 

The ‘cash for favours’ scandal centres on how donations for Charles’s cherished scheme to renovate Dumfries House, a Palladian mansion in Scotland, were solicited and what may have been promised in return.

The bombshell letter, written by Mr Fawcett on August 18, 2017, to Busief Lamlum, an aide to Dr Bin Mahfouz, says: ‘In light of the ongoing and most recent generosity of His Excellency… I am happy to confirm to you, in confidence, that we are willing and happy to support and contribute to the application for Citizenship. 

‘I can further confirm that we are willing to make [an] application to increase His Excellency’s honour from Honorary CBE to that of KBE in accordance with Her Majesty’s Honours Committee.’

The revelation comes a week after this newspaper published a leaked email in which society fixer Michael Wynne-Parker provided details of how dinner with Charles and an overnight stay at Dumfries House could be secured in exchange for a six-figure donation paid through a bank account linked to Burke’s Peerage, a guide to the aristocracy.

With Charles facing the threat of the scandal wreaking serious harm to his reputation, the MoS can reveal that:

Former Minister Norman Baker, a respected author on royal finances, said the sale of honours was an offence and he would be contacting Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick and asking her to investigate;The Prince’s Foundation, which is registered in Scotland, had alerted the Scottish Charity Regulator to its probe;Mystery deepened about the whereabouts of a £500,000 donation to the Prince’s Foundation by a Russian banker whose invite to Dumfries House was revokedThe charity went into business with a Latvian tycoon who was later convicted of money-laundering.

In his damning letter to Mr Lamlum, Mr Fawcett makes no effort to disguise that support for the knighthood and citizenship application depends on Dr Bin Mahfouz’s financial support.

Writing on headed notepaper in his then capacity as chief executive of the Dumfries House Trust, he said: ‘Both of these applications will be made in response to the most recent and anticipated support [of] The Trust, and in connection with his ongoing commitment generally within the United Kingdom. I hope that this confirmation is sufficient in allowing us to go forward.’

A year later, Mr Fawcett’s responsibilities grew when he was put in charge of Charles’s entire charitable empire as the £95,000-a-year chief executive of the Foundation.

One of his main tasks was securing donations for Dumfries House, which Charles bought in 2007 and which he has spent many millions of pounds on renovating.

Responding to our revelations, Douglas Connell, chairman of The Prince’s Foundation, said last night: ‘Earlier today, Michael Fawcett offered to step down temporarily from active duties as chief executive of The Prince’s Foundation while the trustees’ investigation is ongoing. 

‘The Prince’s Foundation has accepted this offer. Michael fully supports the ongoing investigation and has confirmed that he will assist in every way.’

Emily Cherrington, the Foundation’s chief operating officer, will assume Mr Fawcett’s responsibilities while the probe is carried out.

Last night, a spokesman for Dr Bin Mahfouz said he had ‘not had personal or direct communication to either request, influence or make any arrangements regarding citizenship or knighthood with Mr Fawcett, or anyone connected to HRH The Prince of Wales or The Prince’s Foundation’.

Insisting that Dr Bin Mahfouz had not expected any reward for his charitable donations, the spokesman added: ‘His Excellency had expressed an interest in applying for citizenship but in the end decided not to pursue that further.’

The sheikh, who received an honorary CBE from Prince Charles in 2016 ‘for services to charities in the UK’, is an Anglophile whose family made its fortune in the Middle East in hotels, property and manufacturing.

He has made several six-figure donations to Charles’s charities and in October 2014 was invited to Dumfries House for the unveiling of a new fountain named in his honour. 

Mr Wynne-Parker, then a Trustee of the Mahfouz Foundation, was photographed at the event shaking hands with Prince Charles. William Bortrick, the editor of Burke’s Peerage, is seen smiling in the background a few feet away.

The departure of Mr Fawcett –who wielded power greater than most courtiers and was dubbed ‘Rasputin’ by some colleagues – will send shockwaves through Charles’s household. 

Mr Fawcett has twice been forced to resign in the past, but each time has been reinstated to a position of influence.

A former Royal aide said he was surprised by Charles’s continued reliance on such a controversial figure. ‘Michael brings the money in and gets results, so the Prince feels he needs him around, but I never liked him. 

‘More importantly, Michael is a serious risk as far as the Prince’s reputation is concerned.’

Another source said that there had been ‘a reluctant acceptance’ that Charles would need to ‘dine with the Bond villains’ – wealthy and often colourful foreign investors – to bring in major donations required to keep his ambitious charity projects afloat.

The investigation into Mr Fawcett is the second now being conducted by the Prince’s Foundation. Its ethics committee is already probing Mr Wynne-Parker’s email in which he set out how wealthy donors could pay £100,000 to secure a lavish dinner with the Prince of Wales and an overnight stay at Dumfries House. 

The email said fixers would pocket up to 25 per cent of the fees, an arrangement about which the Prince insists he was unaware.

The email said ‘clients’ would assemble for pre-dinner drinks before meeting Charles, explaining: ‘HRH appears and greets each guest individually with conversation and photographer,’ and raised the possibility of relationships lasting longer than the Dumfries House visit.