This article appears in the April 30, 2021 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Some Monkey Business
Gets Prince Charles’ Climate Change Friends in Trouble
[Print version of this article]
April 20—The senior intimates of the British royal family who joined Prince Philip in forming the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Carbon Disclosure Project—original keystones of the Royals’ and City of London’s “green” Malthusian apparatus today—have, like that humanity-hating Prince, now passed away. But the next generation of Goldsmith and Aspinall knights and lords now have a grip on the UK’s Johnson government, and seem to have helped turn it from a commitment to “Build, build, build infrastructure” a year ago, to pushing British “zero-carbon leadership” for the world, now. So, it is interesting that these lords and ladies have now come under investigation by a British government commission for financial malpractice.
The Charity Commission for England and Wales has begun an investigation of the Aspinall Foundation wildlife conservancy for potential financial mismanagement, ensnaring some British Conservative Party circles, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in serious embarrassment, if not legal trouble. The foundation has some very top Tory figures linked to it. Two of the most high-profile are its recently hired communications director, Carrie Symonds, soon to be Johnson’s wife, and Zac Goldsmith, now styled Rt. Hon. Lord Goldsmith, current Environment Secretary in the Johnson government.
The foundation, which owns nature parks with the mission of breeding and protecting endangered species such as great apes, monkeys, lions, tigers, and rhinos, is essentially a joint venture between the Goldsmith and Aspinall families. The founders were the late John Aspinall, who had been a casino operator and well-known contributor to the Conservative Party, and the late Sir Jimmy Goldsmith, Anglo-French financier, and father of Zac Goldsmith. More importantly, the senior Aspinall and Goldsmith were partners with Prince Philip and the late Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands in creating the World Wildlife Fund. The current president of the WWF-UK is Prince Charles. The Goldsmiths, especially Jimmy’s wife Lady Annabel Goldsmith, were intimate friends with the British Royals.
Hailing from an old German Jewish banking family, intermarried with the Rothschilds over several generations, Jimmy Goldsmith was one of the founders of the campaign to leave the European Union (subsequently “Brexit”), and has been the subject of several exposes by EIR over the past four decades. He was a good friend and collaborator of John Train, who led the “Get LaRouche Task Force” in the 1980s, to try to destroy Lyndon LaRouche’s influence and political movement at the behest of George H.W. Bush and his British masters.
Jimmy’s late brother Edward “Teddy” Goldsmith stood at the center of the creation of the international genocidal “environmentalist” movement. His magazine, The Ecologist, was and still is the flagship journal of the movement. Prior to entering government, Teddy Goldsmith’s nephew Zac Lord Goldsmith was the magazine’s editor. Both Teddy and Jimmy were supporters of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and were among the founders of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) which stands at the center of the genocidal Great Reset policy which now dominates European Union and Western economic policy. Teddy, along with funds from his billionaire brother Jimmy, established the Climate Initiatives Fund, which is one of the major funders of the CDP.
(In its August 24, 2001 issue EIR covered in detail the actions of the late Jimmy and Teddy Goldsmith in creating the “environmentalist” movement.)
When he wasn’t busy with the gorillas and rhinos at his wildlife park, the late John Aspinall serviced the British aristocracy’s gambling habits at his exclusive Clermont Casino club. As this report will reveal, he was also the uncle of the Conservative grandee George Osborne, former Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Government of David Cameron. Osborne and Cameron used their positions to facilitate the Royal family’s being financed with tens of millions of pounds from selling leases for offshore wind farms.
Climate Change Mafia Takes Over
The Aspinall Foundation is now in the hands of the younger generation. Its chairman is John Aspinall’s son Damian, and the trustees include Sir Jimmy’s son Ben Goldsmith, an investment banker, and the brother of Zac. Ben is a trustee of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, one of the world’s biggest financiers of the environmentalist movements. Zac Goldsmith only recently resigned as trustee. Another trustee, Robin Birley, is the son of Lady Annabel Goldsmith from a previous marriage. Birley manages exclusive private members clubs, one of which, 5 Hertford Street (5HS), has been patronized by the likes of Prince William and is said to be where Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had their first date. Like his half-brother Zac, Birley was also a protégé of Teddy Goldsmith and is a radical environmentalist.
The Charity Commission has opened what is referred to as “statutory inquiry,” the most serious of investigations, which could lead to the foundation being taken over by the Commission and closed down. The accusations include trustee conflicts of interest and possible misuse of charitable resources. A related but separate statutory inquiry has also been opened into the management of Howlett’s Wild Animal Trust, which runs Port Lympne and Howlett’s Wildlife Parks in Kent. It is also chaired by Damian Aspinall, and its trustees include his daughter Tansy.
The corrupt monkey business under investigation includes the renting of the foundation’s 30-room Howlett’s mansion in Kent to Damian Aspinall, for just £2,500 a month, and then paying Aspinall’s wife, Victoria, £62,500 for interior design services there. Then there is the £30,000 a year “pension” for his stepmother, Lady Sarah Aspinall, as former “head gardener” at the wildlife park. The foundation also paid a firm called Alvarium £64,000 for accounting services in 2019. The Aspinall Foundation trustee Charles Filmer is a director of Alvarium. It is an asset management company, partly owned by Qatar’s royal family and catering to wealthy families, of which Filmer is a senior partner. Among those wealthy families are the Goldsmiths, where Filmer got his beginning working in the family office of Jimmy Goldsmith and eventually became his partner. He served in the 13th/18th Royal Hussars, of which Diana, Princess of Wales, was honorary Colonel.
While Boris Johnson’s fiancée, Carrie Symonds, in her role as head of public relations at the Aspinall Foundation, told the media such inquiries were “commonplace during routine statutory audits,” the fact of the matter is that only 67 charities out of 168,000 are under such an investigation.
Tory Climate Change Lobby
It remains to be seen how the inquiry ends up. Nonetheless special mention of the broader connections of the younger generation is in order, since they stand at the center of the current British climate policy. The Goldsmiths, as being donors to the Conservative Party in particular, have used their wealth and connections to further the Great Reset policy.
Ben Goldsmith is chairman of what is called the UK Conservative Environment Network (CEN), which is the Conservative Party’s climate change organization whose parliamentary caucus includes over 100 Tory Members, one-third the party’s members of Parliament. The “International Ambassador” of the organization is Stanley Johnson, the father of Boris. Deputy Chairman is Benet Northcote, who previously had been Deputy Private Secretary to The Prince of Wales, where he was responsible for Prince Charles’ work on “Sustainability and Responsible Business.” The CEN is part of the project to “modernize” the Conservative Party which was begun under former Prime Minister David Cameron.
Ben is also CEO of Menhaden PLC, an investment trust specializing in “sustainable” energy investments. Its Chairman is Sir Ian Cheshire, who is also chairman of the Prince of Wales Charitable Fund. He was knighted in 2014 for services to business, sustainability, and the environment. A non-executive Menhaden director is Emma Howard Boyd, who is Chair of the British government’s Environment Agency as well as a director of the Prince of Wales’ Accounting for Sustainability Project.
Zac Lord Goldsmith is Minister for the Pacific, Environment, Climate, Forests and Animal Welfare, where among his responsibilities are overseeing the government’s activities related to the next “Earth Summit,” COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland in November. He owes this job to Boris Johnson and arch-Brexiteer Michael Gove. While neither of the latter two were particularly keen on climate change, their attitude seems to have changed after Goldsmith’s electoral donations. As Environment Secretary in the government of Prime Minister Theresa May, Gove made Zac one of the directors in the Environment ministry. After Zac lost his seat in Parliament in the last election, Johnson requested the Queen confer on him a Peerage and a seat in House of Lords, and promoted him to his current position.
Then there is Ms. Carrie Symonds, who as head of the communications department of the Conservative Party found her way into the councils of Number 10 Downing Street and the heart of Boris Johnson. She reportedly was referred to as “Princess Nut-Nut” by the associates of Johnson’s former key aide Dominic Cummings, and has been accused of having an unwarranted influence over Johnson’s political decisions, including the dumping of Cummings from Number 10.
But who has warranted the influence of Carrie? The fact is she got her political start running the political campaigns of Zac Goldsmith, who helped further her career right into Number 10.
The Osborne Connection
The Aspinall family is directly related to that of Sir Peter Osborne, 17th Baronet of Ballintaylor and Ballylemon. Sir Peter is the father of George Osborne, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who while in office collaborated with then Prime Minister David Cameron, to assure that the Royal family could tap tens of millions of pounds from the Crown Estates, especially from the offshore wind farm licenses. (See the article by Dean Andromidas, “Queen Making ‘Windfall’ of Billions from Green Genocide,” in EIR, Vol. 48, No. 9, February 26, 2021.)
The senior John Aspinall was the half-brother to Sir Peter Osborne, having been the first son from a previous marriage of Lady Mary Osborne, wife of the 16th Baronet, George Osborne (grandfather of the former Chancellor). Taken in by his mother and her new husband, John Aspinall proved to be the black sheep of the family, but apparently one of the sources of their wealth. After dropping out of Oxford, Aspinall began running illegal gambling dens in an enterprise in which he was assisted by his mother. According to an article by John Hiscock, “The Real Casino Royale: gangsters in a class of their own,” in the Feb. 24, 2009 edition of The Daily Telegraph, among his clients were the Queen’s racehorse trainer Bernard van Cutsem, the Earl of Derby, and the Duke of Devonshire. Nonetheless, one night the police did raid, and Aspinall and Lady Osborne, grandmother of the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, were charged with gaming offenses, but won the subsequent court case.
The case led to the British Government bringing forward the Betting and Gaming Act of 1960 which made casino gambling legal, and in 1962 Aspinall founded the elite private Clermont Club in London’s Mayfair district, whose original members included five dukes, five marquesses, twenty earls and two cabinet ministers. With proceeds from his casino operation Aspinall established his wildlife park and made donations to the Conservative Party.
One of the former directors of the Howlett’s Wild Animal Trust is John Aspinall’s half-brother, James Francis Osborne, the uncle of the former Chancellor. Ironically, James Osborne is a passionate Brexiteer, was very good friends with Sir Jimmy Goldsmith, and made his fortune through working for Aspinall’s casino clubs. Nephew George, who was a passionate Remainer against Brexit, has been in the political wilderness since leaving Parliament in 2017 and currently is working as an investment banker at Robey Warshaw LLP.
But George Osborne definitely played his part in this Windsor-Goldsmith-Aspinall shaping of the so-called Green New Deal. As Chancellor Osborne sponsored the most influential western central banker of the last decade, Mark “Zero Carbon” Carney, to be Governor of the Bank of England, member of the Bilderberg Society, and head of the Financial Stability Board of the major central banks. Carney’s effective global political partnership with the coal-killing billionaire Sir Michael Bloomberg has brought into being the current versions of the Carbon Disclosure Project and has given them unprecedented “teeth” in shutting down productive industry.
