Now that King Charles is on the throne, he’s in charge of the Duchy of Lancaster, while Prince William is in charge of the Duchy of Cornwall. Both duchies are the two largest feudal landholders in the UK, they represent the two largest real estate empires in the UK. In a Medieval twist, the Duchy of Lancaster also collects millions in profits from dead people too. The Guardian did another extensive report about the f–ked up finances of the Windsors, and this one is a humdinger.
The king is profiting from the deaths of thousands of people in the north-west of England whose assets are secretly being used to upgrade a commercial property empire managed by his hereditary estate, the Guardian can reveal. The Duchy of Lancaster, a controversial land and property estate that generates huge profits for King Charles III, has collected tens of millions of pounds in recent years under an antiquated system that dates back to feudal times.
Financial assets known as bona vacantia, owned by people who died without a will or known next of kin, are collected by the duchy. Over the last 10 years, it has collected more than £60m in the funds. It has long claimed that, after deducting costs, bona vacantia revenues are donated to charities.
However, only a small percentage of these revenues is being given to charity. Internal duchy documents seen by the Guardian reveal how funds are secretly being used to finance the renovation of properties that are owned by the king and rented out for profit.
The duchy essentially inherits bona vacantia funds from people whose last known address was in a territory that in the middle ages was known as Lancashire county palatine and ruled by a duke. Today, the area comprises Lancashire and parts of Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Cumbria.
A leaked internal duchy policy from 2020 gave officials at the king’s estate licence to use bona vacantia funds on a broad array of its profit-generating portfolio. Codenamed “SA9”, the policy acknowledges spending the money in this way could result in an “incidental” benefit to the privy purse, the king’s personal income.
Properties identified in other leaked documents as eligible for use of the funds include town houses, holiday lets, rural cottages, agricultural buildings, a former petrol station and barns, including one used to facilitate pheasant and partridge shoots in Yorkshire. Upgrades include new roofs, double-glazing windows, boiler installations and replacements of doors and lintels. One document references the renovation of an old farmhouse in Yorkshire, helping transform it into a high-end residential let. Another upgrade is helping turn a farm building into commercial offices.
[From The Guardian]
The king’s people have been doing desperate damage control since the Guardian published this ghoulish story. It’s actually insane to me that this has been happening for centuries and people are only discovering it now? Does England not have a more regulated legal framework for what happens when any citizen/subject dies intestate? If someone dies in Lancashire and there are no heirs or a will, the Duchy immediately steps in, grabs everything and puts those profits back into Duchy real estate? The palace ran to the BBC and they tried to put a bow on it and clarify that some of the money does go to charity, but now it seems like the Duchy is saying “okay, mistakes were made, we’ll give it ALL to charity now.” In 2023. Centuries after the fact.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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