Gabriel Pogrund
Sunday February 05 2023, 12.01am, The Sunday Times
It was David Lloyd George’s government that outlawed the giving of honours in exchange for donations to the Liberal Party. At the time, those buying titles — £10,000 for a knighthood, £30,000 for a baronetcy, £50,000-plus for a peerage — included convicted fraudsters, tax evaders and war profiteers seeking to launder their reputations. The Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925 imposed an unlimited fine or up to two years in prison on anyone convicted of “procuring or assisting or endeavouring to procure” an honour in exchange for money.
Almost a century later it is not a shady Liberal peer but a Saudi businessman called Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz who is the subject of a Metropolitan Police investigation into alleged “honours for sale” offences.
Mahfouz, 53, the scion of a middle-sized banking dynasty, is no stranger to illustrious-sounding awards and has acquired doctorates and fellowships aplenty. In 2016 he upgraded to a CBE. It was presented to him by King Charles, then the Prince of Wales, in a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace that was never disclosed in the court circular, the official record of royal engagements.
In the pursuit of the honour, Mahfouz’s representatives received help from Michael Fawcett, the former footman who rose to become Charles’s closest confidant and adviser, among others. All this was revealed in a Sunday Times investigation in 2021.
According to emails, the deal was explicit: in exchange for seven-figure donations to the Prince’s Foundation, the charity that looks after Dumfries House, Charles’s country estate in Scotland, Mahfouz would receive royal help to get a gong. To give just one example, on September 1, 2014, Mahfouz’s man wrote: “MF [Michael Fawcett] is to arrange for MBM to receive his [honour] easily/quickly.” He continued: “Once he has [it] … then more money will follow.”
In September 2021, off the back of our investigation, Charles’s aides were referred to the police. It posed a crisis for the royals. The last time the Met mounted an investigation under the act, during the “cash for peerages” scandal, Tony Blair, then prime minister, was interviewed by detectives three times. The Queen’s son faced similar scrutiny.
And then something strange happened. That is, nothing much at all.
For six months the Met sat on their hands. Week after week, I contacted the force’s press office to ask for an update, only to be given the same response: detectives were conducting an “initial assessment” of the evidence. Meanwhile, Fawcett quit, the Prince’s Foundation chairman quit, the charity’s deputy executive director quit and two regulators launched investigations. Charles says he was not aware of any “cash for honours” deal. Fawcett has not publicly commented.
Last February the Met finally launched an investigation. But they have not spoken to the man at the heart of the scandal: Mahfouz. Or to Charles. All they have said is that they have asked the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for “early investigative advice”.
Last week the police told me they were still “awaiting receipt” of that advice, almost six months later. But I checked with the CPS, which said it wasn’t true and that its lawyers had been in dialogue with detectives. Besides, it would never give advice as a one-off dossier — that’s not how it works, said a person familiar with the process.
To try to get to the bottom of what is going on, I have filed various freedom of information requests. Those on the receiving end of FOI requests are legally required to respond in 20 days. The Met did not respond at all. Instead, after I wrote again to ask for an update, they said they were launching an “internal review” of how they handled the first request. There is no deadline for the results of this review.
As The Sunday Times’s Whitehall editor, I normally focus on politics rather than royalty. My question is whether those at the apex of society — Charles’s advisers among them — are subject to the law. Or do the police quietly lay off the establishment, hoping we won’t notice?
1 comment
Gabriel Pogrund
Sunday February 05 2023, 12.01am, The Sunday Times
It was David Lloyd George’s government that outlawed the giving of honours in exchange for donations to the Liberal Party. At the time, those buying titles — £10,000 for a knighthood, £30,000 for a baronetcy, £50,000-plus for a peerage — included convicted fraudsters, tax evaders and war profiteers seeking to launder their reputations. The Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925 imposed an unlimited fine or up to two years in prison on anyone convicted of “procuring or assisting or endeavouring to procure” an honour in exchange for money.
Almost a century later it is not a shady Liberal peer but a Saudi businessman called Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz who is the subject of a Metropolitan Police investigation into alleged “honours for sale” offences.
Mahfouz, 53, the scion of a middle-sized banking dynasty, is no stranger to illustrious-sounding awards and has acquired doctorates and fellowships aplenty. In 2016 he upgraded to a CBE. It was presented to him by King Charles, then the Prince of Wales, in a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace that was never disclosed in the court circular, the official record of royal engagements.
In the pursuit of the honour, Mahfouz’s representatives received help from Michael Fawcett, the former footman who rose to become Charles’s closest confidant and adviser, among others. All this was revealed in a Sunday Times investigation in 2021.
According to emails, the deal was explicit: in exchange for seven-figure donations to the Prince’s Foundation, the charity that looks after Dumfries House, Charles’s country estate in Scotland, Mahfouz would receive royal help to get a gong. To give just one example, on September 1, 2014, Mahfouz’s man wrote: “MF [Michael Fawcett] is to arrange for MBM to receive his [honour] easily/quickly.” He continued: “Once he has [it] … then more money will follow.”
In September 2021, off the back of our investigation, Charles’s aides were referred to the police. It posed a crisis for the royals. The last time the Met mounted an investigation under the act, during the “cash for peerages” scandal, Tony Blair, then prime minister, was interviewed by detectives three times. The Queen’s son faced similar scrutiny.
And then something strange happened. That is, nothing much at all.
For six months the Met sat on their hands. Week after week, I contacted the force’s press office to ask for an update, only to be given the same response: detectives were conducting an “initial assessment” of the evidence. Meanwhile, Fawcett quit, the Prince’s Foundation chairman quit, the charity’s deputy executive director quit and two regulators launched investigations. Charles says he was not aware of any “cash for honours” deal. Fawcett has not publicly commented.
Last February the Met finally launched an investigation. But they have not spoken to the man at the heart of the scandal: Mahfouz. Or to Charles. All they have said is that they have asked the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for “early investigative advice”.
Last week the police told me they were still “awaiting receipt” of that advice, almost six months later. But I checked with the CPS, which said it wasn’t true and that its lawyers had been in dialogue with detectives. Besides, it would never give advice as a one-off dossier — that’s not how it works, said a person familiar with the process.
To try to get to the bottom of what is going on, I have filed various freedom of information requests. Those on the receiving end of FOI requests are legally required to respond in 20 days. The Met did not respond at all. Instead, after I wrote again to ask for an update, they said they were launching an “internal review” of how they handled the first request. There is no deadline for the results of this review.
As The Sunday Times’s Whitehall editor, I normally focus on politics rather than royalty. My question is whether those at the apex of society — Charles’s advisers among them — are subject to the law. Or do the police quietly lay off the establishment, hoping we won’t notice?