- LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Prince Charles accepted one million pounds
($1.4 million) from the collapsed energy giant Enron for his youth charity,
a spokeswoman for the Prince said on Saturday.
-
- The heir to the British throne also dined
with senior Enron executives and may have met company boss Kenneth Lay.
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- "The Prince did meet Enron representatives
in Houston in 1993," a spokeswoman for Prince Charles told Reuters.
-
- "I can't confirm it was Kenneth
Lay but it's extremely likely that he was among them along with other senior
corporate donors in Houston," she said. She was unable to confirm
media reports that the Prince had visited Lay's home.
-
- The Texas-based energy company was by
then an established donor to Prince Charles's charity for young people,
The Prince's Trust.
-
- "The first donation came in 1991,
when contact was initially made with Enron and that was a 500,000 (pounds)
donation which covered a five-year period," a spokeswoman for the
Trust told Reuters.
-
- "A second donation of 300,000 (pounds)
came in around 1996 to cover the three years through to 1999, specifically
for a European work away programme," she said.
-
- The programme which Enron helped fund
was designed to allow young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, often
long term unemployed or ex-offenders, to gain life skills by working on
community projects in Europe.
-
- Media reports said that Enron executives
were invited to functions at the prince's London residence, St James's
Palace. Neither the Prince's Trust nor Prince Charles's spokeswoman could
confirm such visits but both said it was likely they had taken place.
-
- "We have a large number of corporate
donors and corporate social responsibility is increasingly an area that
companies are concerned with," the trust's spokeswoman told Reuters.
-
- "We work with a vast number of organisations
and invite them to events where they'd meet people who'd gone on the programmes
and benefited from them, anything from awards ceremonies, or on occasion
one of our premieres," she said.
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