The official added: \u201cI think the objectives have been satisfied because lessons have been learned.\u201d The palace did not elaborate on what those lessons were or how their human resource policies have changed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Buckingham Palace to investigate whether Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, bullied her staff<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
In March 2021, Buckingham Palace launched an investigation into bullying claims after an article in the Times of London claimed that two of Meghan’s employees had been driven from their jobs and a third had been undermined.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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At the time, lawyers for Meghan denied the reports, calling it a \u201ccalculated smear campaign\u201d and said that the Times of London was being \u201cused by Buckingham Palace to peddle a wholly false narrative\u201d about the duchess. The reports appeared in the paper shortly before Meghan and Prince Harry’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The palace, which never backed the claims but said they were serious enough to be investigated, said in a statement Thursday that the probe had concluded and that \u201crecommendations on our policies and procedures have been taken forward.\u201d The palace said that it would not be publishing the results of the review, which looked at how the palace handled the complaints \u2014 not the specifics of the themselves.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Royal watchers had expected that the review might be mentioned in the Sovereign Grant Report, the annual financial accounts of the monarchy’s spending and income that was published Thursday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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According to the palace official, the investigation into the bullying was funded privately, not by taxpayer money, meaning that it did not have be included in the public accounts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The annual report showed that British monarch’s official expenditure for 2021-2022 had been about $124 million, an increase of 17 percent on the previous financial year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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This amount exceeded the $105 million in the Sovereign Grant \u2014 the pot of public money provided by the British government to cover the costs of the queen’s household and upkeep of royal residences. The palace said that the royal finances cost $1.57 per person in the United Kingdom and that the bulk of its spending went toward major renovation works at Buckingham Palace. The extra costs, the palace said, would be met by reserves set aside in previous years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The accounts showed that the most expensive royal trip over the past year was the one to the Caribbean in March by Prince William and his wife Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge \u2014 seen as something of a public relations disaster \u2014 that cost $274,000.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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William and Kate, touring the Caribbean to celebrate queen’s jubilee, draw anti-colonial protests, demands for reparations<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n