The BBC has refused to comment on reports it plans to donate £1.5m to a charity chosen by the royal family.
Reports emerged in a number of newspapers over the weekend, including The Times, that the donation is part of an attempt to make amends for Martin Bashir’s Panorama interview with Princess Diana in 1995.
Bashir was found to have acted in a “deceitful” way and faked documents to obtain the interview following an investigation by retired judge Lord Dyson, whose findings were published in May this year.
Dyson also criticised the BBC’s own internal inquiry in 1996 into what happened as “woefully ineffective”.
The alleged payment will include £1.15m, the amount the BBC made from global rights to the interview, as well as around £350,000 in reparations, although a date has not been set for the money to be paid and the terms are being finalised.
The BBC and Bashir have since both apologised and reports suggest that the corporation’s trading arm, BBC Studios, which is not funded by the license fee, will make the donation.
But a spokesperson for the BBC said: “We don’t have a comment on this.”