It’s been well-known for decades, if not centuries, that the British monarch gets to keep all of the gifts they receive from friends, world leaders, despots and everyone else. Many of the jewels in the Royal Collection were “gifted” to the Windsors, and the Windsors obviously never pay taxes on any of those gifts, no matter how lavish. Something shifted when then-Prince Charles married Camilla, and Camilla received and accepted millions in jewelry from Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern kingdoms and emirates. Suddenly, people had concerns and the Windsors were supposed to disclose the gifts they received annually. For the past four years, no disclosures have been made, according to Richard Palmer writing for the Guardian.
King Charles and his family have failed to reveal their official gifts for the past four years, despite previously promising to publish an annual list. Palace officials have blamed the pandemic, the change of reign, and then planning for last year’s coronation for their inability to publish details of the gifts received by members of the royal family.
The royal family’s reticence follows controversy over a cash-for-honours scandal involving the king’s main charitable foundation, which led to a police investigation that was dropped last year without a full explanation from either Scotland Yard or the Crown Prosecution Service. It also comes after revelations that Charles, when he was Prince of Wales, accepted £2.6m in cash in bags from a Qatari politician for another of his charities, the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund.
But unlike MPs, who have to register gifts, donations and hospitality, there is no public register of interests for members of the royal family. Instead, they act on the advice of their private secretaries in deciding what to declare. Annual gift lists were introduced after media criticism of attempts by the royal household to conceal the origin of lavish jewellery given to Queen Camilla by a Saudi royal in 2006 and worn by her on an official visit to the US in 2007.
The last annual list, detailing official gifts received by all working members of the royal family in 2019, was published in April 2020 but since then there has been nothing, apart from the occasional description of an exchange of presents during a state visit or pictures when they are given gifts during an engagement.
Over the years, the annual list has led to controversy, such as in 2012 when it emerged that the king of Bahrain and his country’s prime minister had given a “suite of jewels” to Prince Edward’s wife, Sophie, while facing criticism over human rights abuses. But many presents, including sensitive ones, were often concealed, even though official gifts are not the personal property of the royals and are in effect accepted on behalf of the nation.
Saudi Arabia’s controversial crown prince Mohammed bin Salman gave the Duchess of Sussex a £500,000 pair of diamond chandelier earrings as a wedding present in 2018. In October that year Meghan wore them at a state banquet in Fiji only a few days after the crown prince was accused of ordering the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But when journalists asked where she got them, palace officials said they were “borrowed”. She wore them again that November at a Buckingham Palace dinner to celebrate the then Prince Charles’s 70th birthday. It was only in March 2021, shortly before the Duke and Duchess of Sussex gave a controversial television interview to Oprah Winfrey, that their true provenance was leaked.
The Prince and Princess of Wales, William and Kate, chose not to release a list of any gifts they had received at their wedding in 2011. Only a handful of official gifts received by Queen Elizabeth for her platinum jubilee in 2022 were disclosed and it is not clear what, if any, were given to King Charles and Queen Camilla to mark their coronation.
Re: the earrings from MBS – once again, the earrings were given to the royal family. Then-Prince Charles and Prince William met with MBS just a couple of months before the Sussexes’ wedding in 2018. When Meghan said they were “borrowed,” she was telling the truth. The earrings were borrowed from the Royal Collection. They were “given” to her by Angela Kelly, QEII’s dresser, as a set-up. Ask the palace where the earrings are now and whether MBS’s “gift” is sitting in some palace vault. Throw in the fact that no one knows whether William and Kate are also accepting suitcases full of cash, bags of jewelry or tons of free sh-t from Apple, everyone’s being pretty selective in their outrage.
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