How Harry’s Africa charity took £19,000 furlough cash
PRINCE Harry took the extraordinary step of suing Her Majesty’s Government over the withdrawl of his bodyguards, but his charity is happy to lean on the hard-pressed British taxpayer.
I can reveal that Sentebale, which the Duke of Sussex co-founded in 2006 to help African orphans, used the Government’s furlough scheme during the pandemic. The funding was set up to help businesses survive the crisis.
The charity claimed almost £20,000 of taxpayers’ cash over the past two years. Newly released accounts disclose that Sentebale claimed £5,000 from the Government’s Job Retention scheme last year, on top of £14,000 in 2020. The claim was made even though the charity boasted an income of £3.1 million in the 12 months to last August, an increase of £736,000 from the previous year.
It is not known how much was donated by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who are said to have signed a £100 million deal with American streaming giant Netflix and a rumoured £18million contract with audio company Spotify, in addition to their other income. They live in a nine-bedroom mansion in Montecito, California, which has 16 bathrooms.
Sentebale’s accounts report that almost £1million of its income came from its U.S. division. Of the total, £1.2million came from events, £1million from institutional funding, £413,000 from trusts and foundations, £314,000 in gifts in kind, £144,000 from corporate donors, £31,000 from general donations, £21,000 in investments and £10,000 in legacies.
A note says: ‘After a difficult period, we are grateful to all our generous supporters who enabled us to end the year in a much stronger position than we started, with increased income compared to 2020.’
Total spending at the charity came to £3 million for 2021, against £2.8 million the previous year. Staff numbers increased to 104 from 64, comprising 66 in Lesotho, 32 in Botswana and six in London. A Sentebale spokesman could not be reached for comment while Prince Harry declines to speak to the popular Press.
HIS late father, Chapman Pincher, earned a reputation for unmasking Soviet spies in his three decades as a celebrated investigative journalist.
So author Michael Pincher was surprised when his dad told him he was just one of a few men outside the Soviet Union to receive an Order of Victory medal from Vladimir Putin in 2006. And now he wants to send it back in protest at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
‘I’d like to fly to the Kremlin, knock on the door and tell them I don’t want it anymore,’ says Michael, who’s just published
LADY Lola Bute said last year that her reputation as a socialite masked a series of tragedies that left her ‘on a very destructive path’. Now, she’s shown she can be a force for a good.
The 22-year-old organised her first fundraising gala for four worthy causes and was joined by pals including Stella McCartney, 50, Poppy Delevingne, 36, and her supermodel sister Cara, 29, who left a little worse for wear.
Financier Ben Goldsmith’s wife, Jemima, 33, showed off her baby bump in vintage mesh dress that she bought from a second-hand shop. the book Long Lost Log: Diary Of A Virgin Sailor. Pincher, who died in 2014 aged 100, received the honour because, ‘Putin thought the KGB was a bit flat-footed and wanted to oomph it up a bit.
‘He was impressed with the forensic way my father went about things.’