Latvian police have raided a bank owned by a former trustee at a charity founded by King Charles III.
Valery Belokon was a trustee at the Prince’s Foundation for Community Building, where the then-Prince Charles was president, between 2010 and 2013.
During the same period Belokon was also a director of PF Urban, a private company controlled by the foundation which helped deliver some of its projects.
Belokon is the majority-owner, along with his brother, of the Baltic International Bank in Riga. The bank has been closed down by Latvian regulators following a dawn raid by armed police, according to reports in the Mail on Sunday this weekend.
Regulators were concerned at governance issues at the bank, including failure to do enough to prevent money laundering, the report said.
Belokon told the paper the bank was co-operating with inquiries, adding: “Breaking into a bank by force is considered wholly unjustified.”
PFCF was an independent charity during the time Belokon sat on its board but merged with the Prince’s Foundation in 2018. Its assets and the assets belonging to PF Urban – by this time renamed as Community Capital Ltd – were transferred to the Prince’s Foundation.
The development comes amid separate claims involving the Prince’s Foundation after allegations that a donor was helped to obtain an honour from Prince Charles.
Prosecutors are currently considering whether to bring charges in the cash-for-honours case.
A separate, independent inquiry commissioned by the charity found that Michael Fawcett, the charity’s former chief executive and a long-time aide to King Charles, had co-ordinated with “fixers” over the honour given to billionaire donor Mahfouz Mahrei Mubarak bin Mahfouz. Fawcett quit the charity shortly after the allegations were first published.