Prince Andrew last night faced calls to ‘come clean’ and reveal the secret sources of funding that are bankrolling his stay at Royal Lodge in Windsor.
The King stopped paying his disgraced brother’s £3 million-a-year security bill at the 30-room mansion last month and urged him to move into more modest accommodation as part of an extraordinary row dubbed ‘the siege of Royal Lodge’.
Now it has emerged that Andrew has been allowed to stay at the property in Windsor Great Park after convincing Palace authorities that he has secured enough funds to support himself.
It has been reported that the Keeper of the Privy Purse, Sir Michael Stevens, has approved the financing as coming from legitimate sources.
But Buckingham Palace last night faced a fierce backlash after refusing to say where the money, likely to run into millions, is coming from.
Earlier this month, the Daily Mail’s acclaimed royal writer Robert Hardman revealed in his updated biography of Charles III that the King has also severed his brother’s annual personal allowance, believed to be £1 million a year. Andrew, however, claims to have found ‘other sources of income related to his contacts in international trade’, a source told Hardman.
In an explosive intervention last night, a French socialite who claimed that she lost more than £3 million in a dispute with Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson over the sale of a luxury ski chalet voiced her fury at the Duke’s mystery bailout.
Speaking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday, Isabelle de Rouvre said: ‘I am missing millions as a result of this man. I reduced what he owed me because… they told me he did not have the money. I was left with little choice.
‘Now he is saying he has plenty of finances – but where does this money now come from? They [Andrew and Sarah] were apparently so poor before they had to pay me, and now they are so rich.’
Labour politicians also demanded to know the Duke’s sources of funding. Leeds MP Alex Sobel said: ‘Full disclosure of these funding arrangements is vital to uphold the reputation of the Royal Family.’
York Central Labour MP Rachael Maskell told the MoS: ‘When the funding for the Royal Family is due to rise by £45 million next year to a staggering £132 million, serious questions need to be asked as to why the monarch’s brother continues to reside at his mansion.
‘There must be greater transparency on the source of the money that has allowed Andrew to stay at Royal Lodge.’
It emerged last night that Chancellor Rachel Reeves could be dragged into the row. Andrew leases Royal Lodge from the Crown Estate, which hands its profits over to the Treasury, which has ‘general oversight of the Crown Estate’s business’.
The Duke signed a 75-year lease agreement with the Crown Estate for Royal Lodge in 2003. He pays rent reported to be £260,000 a year and must also ‘repair, renew, uphold, clean and keep in repair and where necessary rebuild’ the sprawling property.
In an increasingly acrimonious stand-off, the King, 75, has been attempting to persuade Andrew, 64, to move to nearby Frogmore Cottage, recently vacated by Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex.
The revelation that he has found the funding to remain in Royal Lodge will raise fears that Andrew is exploiting the foreign business contacts he accumulated during the decade he spent as Britain’s trade envoy.
In 2019 the MoS revealed how he used the taxpayer-funded role to quietly promote a private
Luxembourg-based bank for the super-rich, owned by controversial multi-millionaire David Rowland and his family.
Despite living the lifestyle of a billionaire for years, with an extensive collection of watches, including a £150,000 Patek Philippe, and a small fleet of luxury cars, mystery has surrounded Andrew’s finances. Charles’s decision to sever his allowance means his only official income comes via a small Navy pension of about £20,000–a-year.
Buckingham Palace refused to comment on reports that Sir Michael, a former accountant with KPMG who was appointed Keeper of the Privy Purse in 2018, had approved Andrew’s apparently new funding as coming from legitimate sources. It is unknown what checks took place – or, crucially, how long Andrew said the funding would be in place for.
The secrecy will fuel fears that Andrew’s dealings could plunge the Royal Family into a fresh scandal.
In December 2010 Andrew orchestrated a plan for paedophile Jeffrey Epstein to give Sarah £15,000 to help pay off a debt, just 18 months after the financier was released from jail for soliciting prostitution from underage girls. Sarah later said the decision was a ‘gigantic error of judgment’.
And in 2007 Andrew sold his 12-bedroom Sunninghill Park mansion in Berkshire, a wedding present from Queen Elizabeth, to Kazakh oligarch Timur Kulibayev for £15 million – £3 million over the asking price. Mr Kulibayev, the son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s then president, demolished the house a few years later.
Norman Baker, a former minister and expert in royal finances, said: ‘It is stretching credibility to believe he has legitimate sources of income that enable him to pay a big rent and undertake the necessary repair work, to that building, particularly when he appeared to have nothing just a matter of weeks ago.
‘We need to understand where this money is coming from – whether it is clean or whether it is coming from one of his nasty dictator friends in the Middle East. He should come clean.’
Nigel Mills, a former Tory MP who served on the Public Accounts Committee, said: ‘If he was renting a private house then we wouldn’t have any interest in who was giving him money for rent. But while he is living in a house that is owned by the monarchy, then some transparency is necessary.
‘If the person who is giving the money doesn’t want to be named, then it’s probably a better idea for them not to give money to a disgraced prince.’
But Michael Wynne-Parker, a society fixer, said: ‘Andrew has made bad judgments in the past and he has been quite naive with people. But along the way he has met good people who really like him. I think, from what I pick up in London, that over the last couple of months people have come to support him.’
The Duke could not be reached for comment.