Former Prince Andrew generated income by subletting three cottages on the estate where he lived rent-free for two decades, according to a report on royal family properties released Friday by the UK public spending watchdog.
The National Audit Office report disclosed that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor received revenue from renting out cottages on the Royal Lodge estate, his home near Windsor Castle for over 20 years. A lease signed in 2003 shows he paid only a nominal peppercorn rent for the property, which included a 30-room mansion and eight cottages, three of which he was allowed to sublet.
The amount of income was not included in the report, an omission that Margaret Hodge, a Labour member of the House of Lords and former head of Parliament's Public Accounts Committee, said was concerning. "It's shocking that the National Audit Office was not able to establish how much money Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor secured from the properties he let," she said.
The audit office review was carried out at the request of lawmakers after Mountbatten-Windsor was stripped of his royal titles and evicted from Royal Lodge by his brother, King Charles III, following revelations about his friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Mountbatten-Windsor moved earlier this year to the king's Sandringham Estate in eastern England.
In February, the former prince, 66, was arrested and questioned by police about allegations of misconduct in public office. He has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has not been charged.
The report also showed that 11 working royals receive free housing within palaces in return for their official duties, including King Charles and Queen Camilla, Prince William and Catherine, and Prince Edward and Sophie. William and Kate also have a family home near Windsor, for which they pay rent of 307,200 pounds (about $413,000) a year.
The rents on Princess Eugenie's cottage in Kensington Palace and Princess Beatrice's apartment in St James's Palace are set at a portion of open-market value ranging between 50% and 68% in recent years. Both rents are paid out of the Privy Purse, the monarch's private funds. The pair are not considered working royals and both have outside jobs.
Buckingham Palace said the audit office report "is in line with the royal household's commitment to transparency. We hope that the findings will help correct, clarify or contextualize a number of points regarding royal properties."
Critics of the monarchy cited the findings as evidence the royal family does not pay its way. Norman Baker, a former Liberal Democrat lawmaker and longtime critic of royal finances, said: "It shows an absolute total contempt for the taxpayer, not only that Andrew was able to have a peppercorn rent for a gigantic property, but then to make potentially millions on the side from subletting properties."
Mountbatten-Windsor has featured in millions of pages of documents about Epstein released by the US Department of Justice in January, showing how the wealthy financier used an international web of rich, powerful friends to gain influence and sexually exploit young women and girls. British police are looking into claims that Mountbatten-Windsor sent confidential trade information to the disgraced financier when he served as UK trade envoy from 2001 to 2011. Detectives say they may broaden their investigation to include allegations of sexual misconduct and have appealed for witnesses to come forward.
Mountbatten-Windsor has rarely been seen in public since he moved to the Sandringham Estate, about 100 miles (160 km) north of London. He was photographed Thursday in a car with a large bruise on his face. The Times of London said, without citing sources, that the bruise was the result of a "nonserious medical condition."
