Fawcett is paid £248k by Charles’s charity

Controversial ex-valet still coining it from the Prince

WHEN Prince Charles led a consortium to buy Dumfries House and its unique collection of Chippendale furniture for £45 million it was described as ‘ the biggest gamble of his life’.

Happily, the 2007 punt has paid off for Charles’s controversial former valet Michael Fawcett, pictured.

I can reveal that the Dumfries House Trust, a charity set up to run the 18th century Palladian pile in Ayrshire, has paid Fawcett a staggering £248,000 in the past year. The trust even handed another £16,000 to the company run by Fawcett’s son.

‘Dumfries House seems to be a licence to print money for Fawcett and his family,’ snipes one royal source. Despite twice resigning from the royal household, Fawcett was put in charge of Dumfries House in 2011.

His appointment as executive director raised eyebrows among some courtiers as he had no formal experience of running a charity.

Newly published accounts disclose that Fawcett’s company, Premier Mode Ltd, was paid £105,000 for organising events during the year to April 2016. The documents say ‘these events were underwritten by a donation to the value of £130,000’.

Premier Mode was also paid £80,000 for Fawcett’s ‘role within the trust’. Three quarters of this money came from the Prince of Wales Charitable Foundation. In addition, £60,000 was paid to Premier Mode for ‘consultancy

services’, while another £3,000 was paid to an unnamed employee.

As if Fawcett’s company wasn’t earning enough, the charity also handed over £16,000 to his son Oliver’s company, Grean Tea Productions Ltd, which made ‘a series of short films covering events on the estate during the year’.

Last month the Mail revealed that wealthy businessmen had been asked to pay up to £100,000 each to be entertained by Charles at Dumfries House.

One event last year saw donors asked to transfer huge sums to the bank account of the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation before their invitations were confirmed.

The Prince’s office said the letter had been ‘erroneously’ sent out by a ‘ third party’ without its knowledge and steps were immediately taken to ensure that it never happened again.

A Clarence House spokesman declined to comment yesterday. However, a source said Fawcett’s deputy had ‘full authority in signing off all invoicing from Premier Mode, Grean Tea Productions and all other third parties’. The source insisted that Fawcett himself, ‘ had no involvement in this arrangement’.