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File photo. Prince Andrew. Richard Wainright/AAP/PA Images

Prince Andrew's charity broke law over near-€400k payment to former trustee, watchdog finds

The finding from the UK Charity Commission comes as Andrew is already in a war of words with US authorities over the Epstein case.

THE UK’S CHARITY Commission has ruled that Prince Andrew’s trust was in breach of rules over payments of £355,000 (€3978k) to a former trustee.

Andrew’s charitable body allowed the former trustee to work as a director for a fee for three of its subsidiary companies – in breach of rules.

The Charity Commission announcement comes as a war of words raged between Andrew’s legal team and American prosecutors over his availability to answer questions about his former friend and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Helen Earner, director of operations at the Charity Commission, said: “Charity is special – with unpaid trusteeship a defining characteristic of the sector.

“By allowing the payment of a trustee via its subsidiaries, the Prince Andrew Charitable Trust breached charity law, and by insufficiently managing the resulting conflict of interest from this payment the trustees did not demonstrate the behaviour expected of them.

“We’re glad that concerns we identified are now resolved, after the charity acted quickly and efficiently to rectify these matters. The recovered funds will now go towards the causes intended, and we will continue to work with the trustees as they wind up the charity.”

The Charity Commission said in a statement: “The former trustee was an employee of the Duke of York’s household, and from April 2015 to January 2020 undertook work for the trading subsidiaries.

“The Duke of York’s household was then reimbursed for a proportion of this employee’s time by the subsidiaries after the year end. These payments totalled £355,297.”

The duke’s household has since paid back the money to the Prince Andrew Charitable Trust – which supported Andrew’s charitable work.

The trust has also notified the commission of its intention to wind up, with the remaining funds being distributed to other charities.

Trustees cannot be paid to act as directors of a subsidiary company, unless there is authority from the charity’s governing document or the payments are authorised by the commission or the court – none of which were in place at the trust.

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    Mute Luke Ronan
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    Sep 1st 2022, 7:26 AM

    Nothing special on Repeat Media TV for the winter so. Maybe we get a few nee episodes of The Chase as well?

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    Mute Paul Whitehead
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    Sep 1st 2022, 7:47 AM

    Any chance of a full re-run of Neighbours?

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    Mute Keth Warsaw
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    Sep 1st 2022, 11:48 AM

    Can they give us new adverts too?

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    Mute Darren Anthony Corr
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    Sep 1st 2022, 4:17 PM

    @Keth Warsaw:
    Anything but those bloody Quote Devil ads

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    Mute Darren Anthony Corr
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    Sep 1st 2022, 4:02 PM

    “International Dramas”

    Also known as the police procedurals from England that ITV shown about 2 years ago and that vast majority of people have actually already seen.

    VMTV really makes RTÉ look professional, and that’s saying something.
    Wonder when the new VMTV channel will start airing Ireland AM and the Chase repeats too.

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    Mute Luke Ronan
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    Sep 1st 2022, 9:19 PM

    @Darren Anthony Corr: they already started with repeats of the chase believe it or not! Such lazy scheduling. They have load of old shoes they could easily repeat if they don’t want to pay for new. content

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    Mute Darren Anthony Corr
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    Sep 1st 2022, 9:53 PM

    @Luke Ronan:
    The thing is, VMTV could actually be a decent channel if they actually bothered to be better than RTÉ rather than just competing with them, and do their own terrible versions of RTEs already terrible programming.
    There also isn’t any need for like 4 VMTV channels, 1 is clearly enough. The other 3 are just zombie channels on life support, mainly because they bought them off other companies to eliminate the competition but then didn’t actually have any plans for them.
    But the main VMTV just tries to emulate RTÉ shows in ridiculous ways, like having the news at 5:30 rather than RTEs 6-1, or their own version of the Late Late Toy Show.
    They should be trying to outshine RTÉ and it really wouldn’t be difficult to do, but VMTV is ridiculously lazy.

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