The British royal family is once again under fire for a lack of transparency about its assets and income after media reports revealed that Charles III and William receive money from public bodies while being exempt from certain taxes.
The exact extent of holdings and details of contracts, such as rental leases, entered into by the Duchy of Lancaster, owned by Sovereign Charles III, and the Duchy of Cornwall, owned by Crown Prince William, are not public.
But an investigation by Channel 4 and the Sunday Times published in recent days has brought them to light for the first time.
According to these media, the two duchies have raked in millions of pounds in revenue from lucrative land rental contracts to the NHS, the public health system currently in crisis after years of underfunding, to ministries or agencies. charitable.
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No tax
At the same time, the two duchies, which combine land, property and other assets across England and Wales, do not pay corporation tax or capital gains tax.
For Norman Baker, a former MP for the centrist Liberal Democrats and long-time critic of the royal family, this confirms that the latter is “scamming the public”.
“These are Crown lands which belong to the public (…) All this money should go to the ‘Crown Estate'”, the Crown heritage whose revenues have been returned to the Public Treasury since a law dating from 1760 , he complains to AFP.
According to this law, 15% of the profits from the “Crown Estate” are then paid in an annual allocation (the Sovereign Grant) to the royal family in order to maintain its assets as well as to remunerate the more than 500 employees of the Windsors.
Next year, this allocation will rise to 132 million pounds (150 million Swiss francs). The royal family assures that the profits from the duchies of Lancaster of Cornwall finance the public, charitable and private activities of the sovereign and his heir.
Nothing illegal
These two duchies had been excluded from the 1760 agreement because at the time they generated very little revenue.
But more than two centuries later, they are valued at around 1.8 billion pounds (2.04 billion Swiss francs), and last year raked in 50 million pounds (56 million Swiss francs) in profit, according to their annual report.
Thanks to this, Charles III is one of the richest people in the United Kingdom with a personal fortune estimated at 610 million pounds (690 million Swiss francs).
His Duchy of Lancaster will notably receive 12 million pounds (13.7 million Swiss francs) over 15 years by renting a warehouse to a London hospital to park its ambulances.
For his part, William signed a contract worth 37.5 million pounds (42 million Swiss francs) over more than 25 years with the Ministry of Justice for the rental of the land on which Dartmoor prison is located.
afp/edel
