Does the Lownie book cast doubt on the financial integrity of other more senior members of the royal family past and present?

[Calderasway444]

I’m beginning to think that the words “cover up” should be woven in to the new carpets at Buckingham Palace!

Prince Andrew allegedly breaking the law, allegedly doing personal deals while acting as a trade envoy for the uk, and the late Queen E2 being allegedly fully aware, and it being allegedly hushed up, if true, is serious stuff!

Which begs the questions, do the RF believe themselves to be above the law? Are they allegedly using their wealth, power, and influence to allegedly cover up illegal activities? Is this the way the monarchy allegedly operates?

I think these are legitimate questions in the light of Lownie’s alleged disclosures. Lownie’s book has certainly made me think of the series of questionable incidents involving Prince Charles’s office, as he was then, in a slightly different way.

One of these alleged incidents allegedly involved his former valet Michael Fawcett who allegedly “sold on” gifts given to the Prince, leading to the tabloids calling him “Fawcett the Fence”.

There was an internal enquiry, the Peat Enquiry, carried out by a senior grey suit, and Fawcett was totally exonerated , but apparently it was found that there weren’t sufficient records taken of gifts coming and going. Some press articles subsequently mentioned a whitewash.

Then there was the more serious cash for honours debacle, also involving Fawcett, in which the Saudi billionaire, Mahfouz, allegedly paid tens of thousands of pounds to fixers with links to the then Prince of Wales, who had allegedly told him they could secure him a knighthood and UK citizenship. It was investigated for eighteen months by the Met, two men were interviewed under caution for contravening the Honours (Prevention of Abuses Act) 1925 and the Bribery Act 2010. A file was passed to the Crown Prosecution Services and no further action was taken.

Norman Baker, among others, expressed surprise at this outcome given the available evidence.

Following this was the cash in carrier bags furore when Prince Charles was said to have allegedly been given a total of €3m (£2.6m) during meetings with Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, the former prime minister of Qatar.

There is no suggestion that the money was meant for any other purpose than the King’s charities where it eventually was deposited, but let’s just say it didn’t look good! Especially when us ordinary citizens are required to account for every penny of cash earned when filing tax returns!

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/aug/21/met-police-no-further-action-cash-for-honours-claims-king-charity-princes-foundation#:~:text=2%20years%20old-,Met%20police%20criticised%20for%20ending%20cash%2Dfor,honours%20inquiry%20into%20king's%20charity&text=The%20Metropolitan%20police%20has%20come,king's%20charity%2C%20the%20Prince's%20Foundation

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/26/prince-charles-calls-for-investigations-into-cash-in-bags-controversy

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/aug/21/met-police-no-further-action-cash-for-honours-claims-king-charity-princes-foundation

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11244503/amp/Charles-ex-right-hand-man-Michael-Fawcett-exile-cash-honours-scandal.html

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/mar/13/monarchy2

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/a-right-royal-whitewash-catalogue-of-impropriety-concludes-no-one-behaved-improperly-122722.html#

I mean… is it just me?

Does the Lownie book cast the above incidents in a bit of a different light than previously?

Does all of this explain why Prince Andrew is allegedly still being protected by his brother KC3 to a degree? I have nothing against Charles personally but it does make me question whether this is the way the institution has allegedly operated for centuries, and it’s Lownie’s book that is allowing us to see a more complete picture?

Just the fact that there have been so many investigations which ended up with the result “nothing to see here, move on” is highly suspicious surely?

And it leads me to believe that perhaps the story we have always been sold, that the senior figures of the RF are solid and above reproach, and it’s just the bit players who are allegedly slightly wayward, is a highly suspicious narrative?

10s of thousands, fenced price of gifts?

Peanuts to a state funded and private land holder billionaire family.

Why would they bother selling on gifts for thousands when they have all the money they want and need and if they run out the government tops them up.

Underpaid and undervalued staff pinching gifts and selling them on for personal profit I could believe, Andrew on the make because Mummy hasn't given him enough cash yes, but senior royals trying to make pin money by doing the same. Just why?

Yes, it's just you. Think this topic has been exhausted and, yes, my fault for clicking on it.

It’s odd to choose to focus on the most minor of the alleged misdemeanours and I was thinking more of the value of the gifts to the nation rather than the RF?

If the gifts were received in an official capacity when Charles was on an official visit they, or the equivalent value, should presumably be held in trust not used for personal gain.

Also, if they are swapped for cash there are tax implications which everyone else in the UK has to abide by!

And on principle, there should be very strict protocols observed over gifts for obvious reasons, to guard against impropriety.

It might be tiny amounts in comparison to the overall wealth of the monarchy but the value must add up over the years!

Incidentally, while looking at this issue, I came across this article which says that Fawcett and his family at the time of this enquiry , lived in a grace and favour house owned by Charles, in Hampton Hill. I wonder if that is still the case? If so, that’s one more property in Charles’s ever expanding portfolio that I didn’t know about!

I wonder if the house was purchased before or after Fawcett allegedly took the fall and on which of the three occasions he resigned?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/nov/12/monarchy.jamiewilson

I don’t think it’s just me tbh if I read sm and news articles outside of Mumsnet.

And there is plenty more to explore imho; the most important being, did Andrew break the law while acting as trade envoy and did QE2 know?

If so, the RF of their staff, are guilty of covering up illegal activity.

I think that provides enough grounds by itself for a public enquiry.

I think many ordinary people want answers.

Maybe start a petition for a public enquiry to be carried out and see what response that gets. There is no other way any government will do anything unless they think the public want it and thus getting them votes for future elections.

That’s a good idea, thank you!

Yes I do think they all do it OP. You didn’t mention Sophie and Sarah Ferguson and their fake sheikh stings. And obviously Harry and Meghan. Grifting is just what royals do I’m afraid.

Why, when they have so much money already? Rich people don’t stay rich by letting money slip through their fingers. The most petty, stingy, penny-pinching person I know is a multimillionaire CEO.

There have been Investigations around donations Charles received as POW for Dumfries House in Scotland.

Just the fact that there have been so many investigations which ended up with the result “nothing to see here, move on” is highly suspicious surely?

Not just you.

Exemption from FOI requests is a marvellous thing but it's amazing how little there ever is to see.

I'd still like answers on where the now untraceable funds diverted from the Royal Foundation into Travalyst ended up but I've been asking for years.

It'd be nice to have clarity on where personal gifts and gifts to the nation separate.

All so murky.

Murky indeed.
Will it ever change?
Not in KC’s lifetime - and he is up to his neck in murky dealings himself.
William? Not sure..

Surely King Charles is going to have to do something as a result of this book?

Someone in the RF has to be held accountable for allowing PA to continue as trade envoy for ten years long after complaints started being delivered to QE2 about his allegedly corrupt activities?

They can’t just keep going and ignoring and covering up! Trying to hide alleged illegal activities could go badly wrong for them if they don’t address it. This story isn’t going away.

That’s what the RF have done for thousands of years. They do think they are above the law. Why the public have never had a referendum I don’t know. They need to go.

I was already fully aware of all of this. It’s not a secret. All these stories were covered endlessly at the time they happened.

And I don’t think cover up is the correct word when something has been widely reported, had over a year of Met Police investigation and resulted in changes to process at the royal household.

It’s also not the best definition of being ‘above the law’. In all these cases the law was brought to bare. It isn’t illegal for the RF to accept gifts but it is against protocol, which is why Prince Andrew was eventually slowly retired from royal duties (a process sped up by the Epstein allegations). For those who want to argue- he was very clearly being phased out of high profile royal duties after the cash for access scandals from him and his wife. He still did little things but he’s stopped doing stuff like Pitch at the Palace because he couldn’t be trusted.

I would love to be a fly on the wall at meetings between William and Charles atm!

Imho, there is something seriously wrong with Charles’s parenting if he leaves “the Andrew problem” for his son to sort out!

If Andrew broke corruption laws, then he needs to face the same consequences as any other British citizen. That’s all there is to it.

Perhaps though, as mentioned above, the entire RF is too deeply implicated in dodgy financial dealings for KC to act without exposing himself and others?

It’s not a crime to share offshore accounts I don’t think, but it wouldn’t look good if some of the funds within them were obtained illegally.

@Makehaysunshine Because we don’t need another devisive, ideological referendum to turn family members against each other, soak up millions in government spending, only to result in a net loss of public assets into the pockets of wealthy businesses.

I won’t ever support a referendum on the monarchy because it would be a shit show of epic proportions and feed right into the Nigel Farage playbook of fascist white nationalism.

The idealist who yearn for it are wishing for the wrong things. Getting rid of a monarchy rarely ever results in better lives for the poor. All it ever results in is a land grab by the rich and well connected.

Oliver Cromwell was the grandson of the richest man in England. Simon de Montfort was one of the wealthiest men of his day. Robespierre was the son of a wealthy brewer and attended the Sorbonne. These are not working class heroes. They are the rich not wanting to be controlled by authority and yearning to get their hands on the Crown Jewels. Each one was individually a complete bastard to boot.

I totally agree with you OP. It makes them look grasping and shabby. Those of us in regulated professions are at risk of going to prison if we inadvertently breach money laundering regulations, even if no ML actually takes place. It really grates that these people who are afforded unimaginable wealth and privilege and protection still don’t think that’s enough.

I agree with all you say @Calderasway444

Royalists hate hearing anything against the Monarchy so you will get push back on here.

I want transparency. Won't happen. I think William will be even worse than his father on that score.

Yes I agree we were all fully aware of all these reports! Just as we were aware of a lot of the content of Andrew Lownie’s book. What he did was corroborate and group all of the various incidents and press reports together in one place. I am doing something similar on this thread.

And I am trying to take your point about cover ups objectively. The big factor you are missing out is that you simply cannot place an influential, powerful, endlessly well resourced entity like the monarchy, with many friends in high places, in the same category as say the CEO of a medium-sized company when it comes to investigating potential corruption.

The “Fawcett Fencing” debacle was investigated internally by Sir Michael Peat who was a senior courtier, so cannot exactly be described as objective. Maybe it was? The point is, there is no way of knowing!

As for the investigation in to the royal cash for honours scandal; the most serious aspect of which concerns cash for citizenship, in other words an illegal activity, please read this Daily Mail article by Norman Baker:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9958453/amp/NORMAN-BAKER-Charles-hide-aides-fingerprints-mess.html

It describes a shady pattern of behaviour, not a one off. With donations being made by all sorts of murky international characters with all sorts of potential security threats attached!

It’s interesting that “his own father, Prince Philip, once described Charles as ‘rent-a-Royal’.”

Most importantly though, “ it is a criminal offence to sell an honour under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925.”

It’s the same offence that caused Peter Mandelsohn to resign when he was Trade Secretary. So why any different if carried out by Royals? The difference can presumably only be that they have more protection?

So the Met investigated under Commissioner Cressida Dick, what in the words of Norman Baker “appears to me to be prima facie evidence that an offence has been committed under the Honours [prevention of abuses] Act 1925.”

I may be wrong, from this article about the Met investigation; it appeared to falter when the possibility of interviewing Prince Charles arose. And that just would not happen in the investigation of anyone else.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/feb/16/prince-charles-could-be-called-as-witness-in-cash-for-honours-investigation

Maybe Prince Charles, as he was then, was unaware of the tit for tat scandal, but his right hand man Fawcett took the fall and the impropriety was enough to force him to resign, even though he was shortly hired back again.

So when you say that “the law was brought to bear” how can we possibly know for sure Bontonbonbon that* *is it the same law, applied in the same way, as for every other ordinary British citizen?

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/aug/21/met-police-no-further-action-cash-for-honours-claims-king-charity-princes-foundation

You put it much better than I do KimTheresPeopleThatAreDying

@Calderasway444 It is very naive of you to think that company directors are more transparent than the royals. In my experience they suffer from less scrutiny, perform all sorts of amazing tax dodges and are mostly throughly dishonest.

Thanks for picking up my auto correct typo. That was immensely kind of you. Glad to see that Republican posters are capable of keeping the debate above snarky nit picking.

As for ‘cash for honours’ as an accusation. Yes, it is meant to be illegal. Yes, there have been some hazy accusations (not all completely evidenced) against members of the royal family. However, in practise it is members of the government (especially the Conservatives) who sell on honours to rich mates in exchange for comfortable post ministerial positions and kick backs. I think Michelle Mone is the perfect example.

The RF is probably less corrupt than they people we freely elect. They have more scrutiny in the press and via parliament and probably less influence because of the constraints of a constitutional monarchy. It is very Schrodingers monarch with Republican campaigners: simultaneously vastly powerful, controlling and influential. And at the same time pointless, ineffective and irrelevant.

I’ll state again that a referendum on the monarchy is an exercise in self destruction and pie in the sky idealism which would end in no one being better off except the Uber wealthy (like Bezos, Musk et al) who would swoop in and buy off national assets at a bargain price when they off loaded ‘for the good of the people’. This is exactly what happened in the French Revolution. Fat cat businessmen asset striped the nation, causing a power vacuum that gave us Napoleon- who was even more excessive than Louis XIV.

Well it’s hardly a surprise that wealthy people were at the forefront of change five hundred years ago, as they were the only people who could afford an education!

Now, in theory, with so many attending university, the level of debate among the masses should be much higher!

The experience of Brexit shows however that the process of a referendum doesn’t stop unscrupulous people telling pure lies, therefore I am not advocating that.

I think the way forward is consensus by gradual evolution. And the more transparency we have from the RF, the less we need a referendum frankly!

The need for change should be reflected in the House of Commons and steered by the Government.

I think it should be clear by now that the RF can no longer be trusted to administer their own financial affairs without independent oversight.

It shouldn’t be left to Prince Charles to tell us how he is going to slim down the monarchy. We the people via the Government should be overseeing that process.

The view of a small but vocal establishment minority in favour of the status quo, is not sufficient to stop inevitable change.

@Calderasway444 Is It a ‘small but vocal minority’? Polling certainly doesn’t support that assertion. The spilt is very Brexit style, even in the younger age groups- roughly 50/50 if you take a broad average of polling.

Let’s no pretend this is on top of anyone’s political ‘to do’ list. I actually think it’s used as a deliberate distraction by the newspapers to draw attention away from rampant capitalist exploitation at the hands of larger corps. Jeff Bezos is the most influential person in the world and has zero checks and balances. I’d much rather campaign for tech bros to have more restrictive legislation. That is something which would changes the lives of the poorest over night.

I so agree with this.

Change needed. Abolishing the Monarchy will not happen. Maybe in a few generations time, who knows.

The more transparency is throwing out the Erskine May handbook on parliamentary procedure (guidance not law) which does not allow any Royal or royal practice to be questioned in parliament. They are untouchable that means. Questions are tabled a lot, and thrown out by the speaker. If parliament and the Government can't question them, who can???

This article explains it well. From the Speaker "We do not discuss the Royal Family"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/25/parliament-monarchy-keir-starmer-queen

Independent scrutiny of royal finances, SG, duchies... they scrutinise themselves more or less!

Gradual evolution, yes yes yes. It is the only hope.
BUT I don't hold out any hope with William. He says he wants to do Royalty with a small 'r'. That means doing very little and even less than his father for the same amount of money!
Tell us how much tax you paid on the Duchy income William, that would be a start.

@jumpingthehighjump Totally agree. It is the fault of Parliament that they are not doing their job holding the RF to account and choose not to discuss anything to do with them, Head of State or head of States 60+ year old brother who is a million miles away from being Head of State. We need to be asking them why they don't want to do it. The Royals do these things because they can. Because no one is willing to hold them to account. The late Queens 'Never complain, Never explain' mantra looks like 'I'll do what I like and I will never explain myself''

Never explain' mantra looks like 'I'll do what I like and I will never explain myself''

Haha yes! Pathetic. They complain when they fancy, Charles has been a whinger on and off for decades.