It has appeared in filings that in 2020, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle actually spent more on legal fees for their charities than they raised.
The couple officially started the Archewell foundation in 2020 but the bank account was only first opened in January 2021, and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex told the IRS that the charity had only raised $50,000 in that year.
Meanwhile, documents for their UK charity Sussex Royal, which changed its name to MWX Foundation in 2020 and is currently being dissolved, show that between June 2020 and June 2021, it had spent more than $55,000 on legal fees including attorneys’ costs for wrapping up the nonprofit, according to the Mail Online.
The charities, headed by Harry and Meghan, have been hit with controversies since they launched as they showed divisions within the family and also garnered the attention of a UK watchdog investigation and criticism over their use of secretive Delaware corporations.
UK Companies House filings show the dissolving British charity had more than $380,000 in its accounts in 2020, and spent at least $55,600 on attorneys, including about $35,000 to Harbottle & Lewis and $20,600 to an unidentified law firm
When they left the UK and moved to Stateside, the Royal couple set up the Archewell charity in April 2020, but according to their lawyers, a bank account for the charity wasn’t set up until January 2021.
As the news of the launch gained huge press attention around the world, the lack of donations could be seen as surprising. But sources close to Harry and Meghan told The Telegraph last year they were delaying any official Archewell projects to focus on the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement and would begin in earnest ‘when the time is right.