The BBC ‘has STILL not paid £1.5million “guilt” money to charities selected by Royal family after Martin Bashir scandal over his bombshell Panorama interview with Princess Diana’
- The Corporation promised to pay Royals’ chosen charities – but dragged heels
- More than a year after agreeing ‘substantial damages’, BBC cash remains unpaid
- The funding will now reportedly go to charity of the Corporation’s choice instead
- Lord Dyson found in 2021 Bashir used ‘deceitful behaviour’ to gain Diana access
The BBC has still not paid the £1.5million sum it agreed to hand to the Royals’ chosen charity after Martin Bashir’s interview with Princess Diana was found to be ‘deceitful’.
An inquiry last year found the disgraced Panorama journalist behaved dishonestly in organising the explosive sit-down with the late Princess of Wales in November 1995.
Corporation officials agreed to pay the ‘substantial’ fee to a fund selected by Prince Harry and William – but will now likely go to causes supported by Diana.
Bashir’s contentious interview with Diana, filmed in 1995, was thought to be a major scoop
That decision is said to have come after a suggestion by her brother Earl Spencer, The Sunday Telegraph reported.
In the 1995 Panorama interview, filmed at Kensington Palace, Diana admitted to adultery and said there were ‘three of them’ in her marriage – referring to Camilla Parker Bowles.
Ex-BBC director general Tony Hall said the Dyson Report was ‘woefully inadequate’
Charles and Diana divorced a year later, having separated in 1992.
Bashir resigned as the BBC’s religion editor last May, days before the release of an excoriating report into his conduct by Lord Dyson.
Dyson said Bashir forged bank statements and lied to persuade the late Princess to sit for the historic interview, and that the BBC covered up the scandal for years afterwards.
At the time, the interview was dubbed ‘the scoop of the century,’ revealing Diana’s affair, bulimia, and her description of a ‘crowded’ marriage to the Queen’s son, Prince Charles.
Lord Dyson’s damning report found Bashir told Diana she was being spied on and that Prince Charles was having an affair with Tiggy Legge-Bourke, Harry and William’s nanny.
The allegedly forged bank statements he used to persuade her brother purported to show payments from Rupert Murdoch-owned media company News International to an offshore firm owned by Spencer’s former employee.
The claimed forgery used Diana’s paranoia that she was being spied on, betrayed, and should be fearful for her life.
The revelations from Bashir’s interview sent shockwaves across the world and led to the princess being ‘cast adrift’, left to fend for herself outside the royal circle.
Two years later she died in a car crash in a Paris tunnel while being chased by paparazzi.
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