The US newspaper wrote that as Prince of Wales, Charles spent “half a century turning his royal fortune into a multi-billion dollar portfolio and one of the most profitable earners in the royal family business”. The story’s authors described how King Charles would take the portfolio of his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, and inherit a share of this untold personal wealth tax-free “whereas British citizens typically pay around 40 per cent inheritance tax”. They then questioned his personal fortune, which they say was amassed at a time when the UK was facing deep budget cuts and the use of food banks almost doubled. “His palace and polo lifestyle has long fueled accusations that he is out of touch with the common people. And at times it has been the unwitting symbol of that disconnect,” write London-based authors Jane Bradley and Euan Ward.
“The estate of the Duchy of Cornwall operates like a company”
They say the private estate of the Duchy of Cornwall “generated tens of millions of dollars a year” and “did so without paying corporation tax as most businesses in Britain have to and without publishing details of where the estate invests its money”. “Ducato has been steadily commercialized over the past few decades,” the authors quote Laura Clancy, author of Running the Family Firm. “It runs like a commercial enterprise with a CEO and over 150 staff.” What was once considered just “a bunch of gentry’s land” now functions like a corporation, he said. The paper has covered the Queen’s death and the accession of King Charles III with bated breath, including a number of critical opinions. The newspaper last week came under fire for promoting an article that claimed Queen Elizabeth II helped cover up a bloody history of decolonization. In an article published last week titled “Paint the Queen, not her Empire,” Maya Jasanoff, a professor of history at Harvard University, wrote that “we may never know what the Queen did or did not know about the crimes committed. in her name. Nor have her subjects necessarily gotten the full story.” Several US media outlets reported an increase in readership thanks to stories covering the Queen’s death. However, Howard Stern, a hugely popular and outspoken US radio personality, criticized the wall-to-wall coverage of the US media on Monday. “It’s weird traditions and everything and I’m like, ‘Jesus, enough with the queen’!” she told co-host Robin Quivers when her death was reported. “I mean, it’s America, we don’t have a queen.”
