Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor sublet cottages on Royal Lodge estate while he paid peppercorn rent, report says | CNN

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor sublet and generated an income from three cottages on his estate in Windsor, England, an independent report into the British royal family’s property arrangements revealed on Friday. Mountbatten-Windsor — known as Prince Andrew until his brother King Charles III stripped him of his titles over his links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — lived at the Royal Lodge in Windsor for more than 20 years. The report, by public-spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO), couldn’t establish how much income Mountbatten-Windsor generated from subletting the cottages. He himself paid just £1 million ($1.3 million) upfront for a 75-year lease in 2003` and a peppercorn rent — a symbolic, negligible amount — to live at the 30-room mansion and surrounding estate. He also paid £7.5 million ($10 million) to renovate the lodge, a sum that the report said reduced the upfront payment. Such a financially favorable arrangement came under renewed scrutiny last fall in the weeks after Mountbatten-Windsor’s close relationship with Epstein was once again highlighted when the US Department of Justice released the documents it held relating to the late se