Let’s Sheikh Hands: Arab Billionaire Among Donors

A report released this week by the 800th Anniversary Fund, and obtained exclusively by The Tab, has revealed a cast of eccentric characters who have donated large sums of money to the University.

It comes following the news that the Fund raised £139 MILLION this academic year, surpassing the £900 million mark for the campaign, and leaving Trustees confident they can smash their £1 BILLION target.

The success was due in part to a donation by flamboyant Saudi billionaire Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, through his Al-Waleed bin Talal Foundation.

Noted for his bizarre behaviour, Al-Waleed developed an obsession with table tennis after his education in the US.

The Prince in action at his palace.

He is alleged to host monthly tournaments with his staff.

The undisclosed amount was probably small change for the Arab playboy.

Al-Waleed and his two wives live in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in a $300 million sand-colored palace.

Its 317 rooms are adorned with 1,500 tons of Italian marble, silk oriental carpets, gold-plated faucets and 250 TV sets.

It has four kitchens, for Arabic, Continental and Asian cuisines, and a fifth just for dishing up desserts, run by chefs who can feed 2,000 people on an hour’s notice.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnEYf8w1Ab0

For travelling, he uses a custom built Airbus A380, dubbed ‘The Flying Palace’, and bought at a cost of over $320 MILLION, despite already owning a Boeing 747.

His yacht featured in the Bond film Never Say Never Again.

Al-Waleed has also announced astonishing plans to build the ‘Mile-High Tower’, which would be twice the size of the world’s current tallest building, Burj Khalifa.

Al-Waleed’s ‘Mile High Tower’ dwaves the world’s current tallest building and its competitors

But the report also contains donations from more questionable benefactors.

Cambridge accepted cash from Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad al-Sabah, to research obesity.

He is under investigation over allegations that his office misappropriated millions of dollars in the run up to the 2008 elections, and has been forced to resign FIVE TIMES since 2006, sending the country into chaos.

Struggling bankers Citigroup are members of the elite ‘Vice-Chancellor’s Circle’, for those who have made ‘significant support for key projects and programmes that underpin excellence at Cambridge’.

They were chastised for facilitating the funding of two vicious civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia, by enabling the warlord Charles Taylor, now on trial for war crimes in The Hague, to loot timber revenues.

When contacted by The Tab, a spokesman for the University was unavailable to comment on the size of the donations.