Prince Charles carried on sending a ‘substantial sum’ of money to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in the months following Megxit, despite Prince Harry claiming his family ‘literally cut me off financially’.
The Prince of Wales appears to have continued funding the Sussexes until the summer of 2020, but the duke told Oprah Winfrey that he stopped getting support in the first quarter of that year.
Clarence House financial accounts showed that combined funding for both of the heir to throne’s sons – Princes Harry and William – totalled £4.5 million, though no breakdown of how that money was split is available.
Allies of Charles had previously said he felt ‘let down’ by his son’s claim.
Harry and Meghan were still listed as receiving money from Charles’ Duchy of Cornwall income, despite quitting the monarchy at the end of March last year.
The funding bill – plus other expenditure including Charles’s capital expenditure and transfer to reserves – dropped by around £1.2 million in the financial year after the Sussexes stopped being senior royals.
A senior Clarence House spokesperson said: ‘As we’ll all remember in January 2020 when the duke and duchess announced that they were going to move away from the working royal family, the duke said that they would work towards becoming financially independent.
‘The Prince of Wales allocated a substantial sum to support them with this transition.
‘That funding ceased in the summer of last year. The couple are now financially independent.’
Quizzed on the discrepancy in the duke’s remarks, the spokesperson said: ‘I wouldn’t acknowledge that they are dramatically different. All I can tell you are the facts.’
A spokesperson for the Sussexes insisted there was no difference in timeline, and that Harry was actually referring to the first quarter of the fiscal reporting period in the UK, which runs from April to July.
‘You are conflating two different timelines and it’s inaccurate to suggest that there’s a contradiction,’ Harry and Meghan’s spokesperson said.
Harry and Meghan signed multimillion-pound deals with Netflix and Spotify, with the duke telling Oprah he secured these to pay for his security.
He said he had what Diana left him – £7 million at the time – and ‘without that we would not have been able to do this’.
Pre-Megxit, the duke and duchess’s joint wealth was estimated to be £18 million, but will have been boosted substantially by their high-profile deals.
The Clarence House spokesperson branded the couple’s departure as working royals as ‘a matter of enormous sadness to the family’, adding: ‘But the prince wanted to help make this work, (and) allocated a substantial sum to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, to help them with that transition.’
They added: ‘I betray no confidence when I say they’ve been very successful in becoming financially independent.’
Clarence House’s annual review revealed that the prince’s bill for the Cambridges’ and the Sussexes’ activities, plus other expenditure including Charles’s capital expenditure and transfer to reserves in 2020/2021, was £4.452 million, a fall of around 21% or £1.155 million from £5.607 million in 2019-2020.
The report provided no detailed breakdown of the figures.
Charles’s annual income from the Duchy of Cornwall profits fell to £20.4 million – a drop of £1.8 million or 8%.
His Sovereign Grant funding dropped from £1.8 million in 2020 to just £0.4 million this year.
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