The Natural History Museum was paid tens of thousands of pounds to host a controversial event for the Saudi embassy after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Guardian has learned.
The taxpayer-funded museum came under fire for holding the reception in October in London as global outrage grew about the killing in the Saudi Arabian embassy in Istanbul.
Now the Guardian can reveal that the museum made a healthy profit shouldering the criticism, which included accusations it was accepting “blood money”.
The Saudi embassy paid out £23,700 to hire the Hintze Hall in the museum’s Waterhouse building, according to a response to a Freedom of Information request sent by the Guardian.
The museum’s website boasts that visitors to the hall “can wander among meteorites, mammals, fish, birds, minerals, plants and insects”. The hall also has exhibits including a 25-metre blue whale skeleton, suspended in the air, a rock as old as the solar system, fossil trees spanning hundreds of millions of years and an American mastodon, the elephant’s Ice Age relative.
The revelation comes as foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt met with King Salman of Saudi Arabia in a visit to Riyadh on Tuesday where he said he would raise Khashoggi’s killing. After initially denying involvement, the Saudi government admitted that a team of rogue agents murdered Khashoggi, a journalist in self-imposed exile who wrote for the Washington Post and regularly criticised the regime. It has arrested 18 people allegedly involved.
According to a Turkish newspaper, in an audio recording of his final moments, Khashoggi is alleged to have said: “I’m suffocating … take this bag off my head, I’m claustrophobic.”
The reception at the Natural History Museum was held on 11 October to celebrate Saudi Arabia Day – little more than a week after the murder. Critics rounded on the museum for accepting the money.
Labour MP Ann Clwyd, who sits on the foreign affairs select committee, said: “Contractual obligations and commercial necessity do not let organisations, such as the National History Museum, off the hook.”
Maya Foa, director at human rights NGO Reprieve, said: “It is a cruel irony that the Saudi government paid to host an event at a British institution so beloved by children, when they are simultaneously trying to execute young men who were children at the time of their arrest.
“Ali al-Nimr and Mujtaba al-Sweikat, as well as several others arrested and sentenced to death as juveniles, would love to visit the Natural History Museum but are instead facing execution for attending pro-democracy protests.”
The Natural History Museum is set to receive £176.9m from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in grants from 2016 to 2021. Museum director, Sir Michael Dixon, was paid between £230,000 and £235,000 in 2017/8, including bonus, pay and pension contributions.
An NHM spokeswoman said: ‘The Natural History Museum was booked by the Saudi embassy in early August as a venue for an external event to celebrate Saudi Arabia Day. No museum staff attended as guests or spoke at the event.
“Enabling commercial events to take place outside of public opening hours in our iconic spaces brings the museum an important source of external funding, which allows us to maintain our position as a world-class scientific research centre and visitor attraction.
“We hold a wide variety of commercial events and it is made clear to any host that doing so is not an endorsement of their product, service or views.”
The Saudi embassy in London did not respond to a request for comment.
