Opaque network: Meghan and Harry found 13 companies in a tax haven

Even before Megxit, Duchess Meghan (40) and Prince Harry (37) became company founders – without the public noticing. Even before the official announcement of their retirement from all royal offices, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex registered numerous companies and thus founded an opaque company network.

Spicy: Harry and Meghan founded the company in April 2020 not in their current homeland of California, but in the tax haven of Delaware. The US state is located on the east coast of the United States and is considered a true tax haven.

Delaware itself advertises not only with its low tax rates, but also with a particularly liberal corporate law. Companies can be founded anonymously here and no share capital is required. About 65 percent of America’s top 500 corporations are incorporated in this East Coast tax haven — Delaware has more incorporated businesses than residents.

Harry and Meghan: non-transparent deals in Delaware

The biggest advantage of Delaware for entrepreneurs: All financial information about the companies founded there is kept strictly confidential. Are Harry and Meghan trying to run their businesses as opaquely as possible? It is strange that the place of registration of the Sussex couple’s companies usually does not correspond to the company headquarters.

Although Harry and Meghan’s companies are registered in Delaware, most of the companies are based in the Beverly Hills office of lawyer Richard Genow. Genow has been working for Meghan Markle for a long time.

However, these 13 companies are not the first to be founded by Meghan in the tax haven. Frim Fram Inc. was registered in Delaware in 2019 and has since been responsible for Meghan’s lifestyle blog The Tig and for advertising cooperations.

13 limited companies are owned by the Sussex couple

Most of the companies are companies that are supposed to be in the entertainment industry. The US company form LLC (Limited Liability Company), which Harry and Meghan mostly chose for this, is similar to the German legal form GmbH – in both cases the shareholders are not personally liable.

These 13 companies incorporated Harry and Meghan in Delaware:

• Peca Publishing LLC: The publisher owns the rights to Meghan’s children’s book The Bench.
• Orinoco Publishing LLC will probably hold the rights to Harry’s memoirs, due to be published this year.
• Archewell Audio LLC and Archewell Productions LLC should contracts for cooperation with Netflix and negotiate Spotify.
• Bridgemount LLC, Hampshire LLC, Cloverdale Inc. and Riversoul are companies that aim to operate in the entertainment industry. Details are not known.
• Cobblestone Lane LLC holds the rights to the logo of the Archewell charity, which Harry and Meghan founded and also registered in Delaware.
• IPHW LLC owns the rights to the Archewell trademark – the letters AW.
• Baobab Holdings LLC According to company documents available to the British Daily Mail, it is to be used for investments. Nothing more is known.
• Nemawashi Holdings LLC and RPV Holdings LLC: The purpose of these two companies is not known.

Company names are reminiscent of Lady Di and Meghan’s mother

Many of the names that Meghan and Harry have come up with for their companies allude to the couple’s personal memories and experiences. Cloverdale Inc. may be a reference to Meghan’s mother’s address, which she moved to after the 1983 divorce: S. Cloverdale Ave in Los Angeles. With Orinoco Publishing LLC, Harry could remember his late mother Diana († 36), who loved to hear songs by the singer Enya (60), including the song Orinoco Flow.

For the company name Hampshire LLC, Harry and Meghan could have been inspired by their vacation in 2019 – just before the birth of their son Archie (2). In the final weeks of pregnancy, the Sussex couple spent three nights at a luxurious five-star property in Hampshire, UK.

The name of the publishing house Peca Publishing LLC could be based on Meghan’s book that she wrote as an eighth grader: “A Face Without Freckles is a Night Without Stars” – “A face without freckles is like a night without stars”. “Peca” is Spanish and means freckle.

Whether the companies in the tax haven will be more successful than the Archewell Foundation, the 2021 more expenses than income had remains to be seen.

But the founding of 13 companies as an opaque company network in a tax haven is certainly not well received by the public.