To be fair to the Windsor family it should be noted that not all of their extraordinary wealth has come at the expense of taxpayers.
The Guardian newspaper has looked into the sources of the wealth of the notorious Andrew Windsor.
Like the others in his family he has been well cared for by extraordinary state handouts, that have more than supplemented his Navy pension of about £20,000 per year.
Between 1978 and 2010 he was paid as a “working royal”. The last known pay cheque was for 2010 and amounted to £249,000 for just that one year.
In the 40 years up to 2019 he received £13m from the people of Britain.
We would know more but in 2011 the regular publication of the amounts paid to the Windsors was stopped by the British state and kept secret from the British people. The monarchist state feared that the truth might make some think twice about the merit of monarchical privilege.
These payments from the state stopped eventually, his reputation having become too bad. Mr Windsor’s mother and brother then stepped in with payments of £1m a year. In 2024 even these payments stopped.
But these handouts have not been enough to satisfy Andrew Windsor.
According to the Guardian he spent decades living in luxury but with no obvious sources for much of his income. He owns a chalet in Switzerland that cost £18m in 2014. And he was wealthy enough to pay £1m for a Georgian mansion requiring the maintenance of 40 hectares of grounds. As a part of the deal he agreed to pay £7.5m for repairs.
Police guards cost Mr Windsor another £3m a year according to the newspaper.
A Prince For Hire
The money taken from taxpayers was not enough to sustain this way of life.
So Windsor used his position as trade commissioner to generate more wealth. He used the contacts that this post brought to make commercial deals for himself, acting as middle man or making introductions that his status made particularly valuable..
As the Guardian says he used “his public role for personal gain, or put more simply, corruption”.
And again British governments protected him by suppressing the facts and keeping the people in the dark.
Windsor did not worry about having a holiday with a smuggler. He criticised a police corruption investigation. And he had lunch at Buckingham Palace with a member of the then Tunisian dictatorship.
In 2007 he sold a mansion that his mother had given as wedding present to the son-in-law of the president of Kazakhstan for £3m above the asking price of £12m, apparently indifferent to the reasons this man would be so generous.
According to press reports Windsor worked for Swiss and Greek businesses that were seeking contracts in Kazakhstan. The reward for helping to put one deal together was £3.85m.
Windsor also gave the very notorious Jeffrey Epstein access to politicians and business people, giving Epstein a veneer of respectability.
Sometimes Deals Went Wrong
Sometimes deals went wrong
Windsor repaid £750,000 that Selman Turk had paid him for unknown reasons following allegations of fraud in the High Court.
One business partner was said in court documents to be a Chinese spy.
Family Affair
Mr Windsor’s former wife Sarah also benefited from the generosity of those with money to share. She was given £15,000 by Epstein to help her reduce her debts.
She also benefited from her husband’s talent for bringing in money from those who hoped to profit from his illustrious status.
According to the BBC Mr Windsor arranged a private tour of Buckingham Palace “for businessmen from a cryptocurrency mining firm which agreed to pay his ex-wife up to £1.4m”. Solar energy was to be used for the crypto “mining”.
It is not clear whether these visitors were introduced to the then hereditary head of state Elizabeth Windsor.
Windsor’s former wife was employed by Pegasus Group Holdings as a “brand ambassador” and was paid more than £200,000 for her work. This was a crypto mining company which left its investors millions of pounds short when it went out of business.
Some investors took legal action. They were awarded $4.1 by a tribunal.
Her contracted entitled her to a stake in the business, first class air travel, five-star hotel accommodation and the services of hairdresser and makeup person. Ferguson also expected a bonus of £1.2m according to the BBC.
All of this was despite her lack of expertise in crypto or solar energy.
British State Protects The Family
Mr Windsor’s investments were hidden from public in a shell company kindly set up by the British government to protect its “royal” friends from public scrutiny.
As usual the British state put the interests of the monarchy first and the rights of the people last.