Page 10 QQQ Daily Mail, Wednesday, August 21, 2019
Financier’s new will
2 days before suicide
They said she was a ‘family friend’
of Andrew, his ex-wife Sarah and
their daughters, Princess Beat-
rice and Princess Eugenie. At the
time of the video she had recently
moved to New York.
‘The duke invited her for a cup
of tea as he was in the city and
she stayed at the house for
around 45 minutes and then left.
She did not see Epstein while she
was there,’ a source said. ‘The
current speculation is deeply
upsetting for her.’
The source did not deny that
Miss Keating knew Epstein but
stressed that she visited the
house that day to see the duke
and did not meet anyone else.
Her friendship with Andrew is
not Miss Keating’s only tie to the
Epstein scandal. She is known to
be close friends with Ghislaine
Maxwell, the British socialite
accused in court papers of
recruiting underage girls for the
paedophile – which she denies.
They have been photographed
together several times, with Miss
Keating giving a speech at a party
Miss Maxwell threw in New York
in 2013. Miss Maxwell, who rarely
gives interviews, also chose Miss
Keating to help her break her
an average home is worth £131,
against £54,000 in 1991, a price that
has slightly more than doubled.
A rebanding of council tax so
homes are charged according to
modern prices would threaten
major increases in the South but
less steep tax rises in the North.
In the 2000s Labour Chancellor
Gordon Brown repeatedly delayed
any rebanding at a time when high
annual council tax increases were
deeply unpopular with the middle-
class voters on which the New
Labour government depended.
Yesterday the MPs’ report said:
‘Council tax is a regressive tax dis-
connected from property values.
‘A revaluation for council tax pur-
poses is long overdue. The Govern-
ment should hold a review into how
a revaluation could be implemented
without dramatic increases for
individual households.
‘Any revaluation should be reve-
nue-neutral at the national level. It
also does not mean significant
changes in council tax must be put
in place immediately. It could be
phased in over time.’
The MPs added: ‘All houses built
over the past 25 years still have to
be valued by the assessor as to
what the value of the property
would have been in 1991. This can-
not continue.
‘There needs to be a review of
council tax including revaluation,
the number of bands and the ratio
between bands. The Government
should consider the case for creat-
ing new council tax bands at the
top and bottom of the scale.’
A spokesman for the Ministry of
Housing, Communities and Local
Government – now led by Secre-
tary of State Robert Jenrick – said:
‘We are providing local authorities
with access to £46.4billion this year
- a real terms increase.
‘Ultimately councils are responsi-
ble for managing their own
resources, and we are working with
local government to develop a
funding system for the future.’
Officials said that councils have
been given an extra £650million for
social care in 2019-20 by the Treas-
ury, including £240million to
support adult social care services
to reduce pressures on the NHS.
There was a further £410million
for local authorities to support
adult and children’s social care,
and where necessary to relieve
demand on the NHS, they added.
SWEEPING changes to
council tax that would mean
major rises for families in
southern England were
demanded by MPs yesterday.
They said councils need bil-
lions more every year than they
are given by the Treasury, and
council tax must be reviewed to
help them receive it.
Some of the money should be
raised by a shake-up of council tax
bands, said MPs on the housing,
communities and local government
committee, which has a majority of
Labour members.
Chancellors of all governments
have put off updating council tax
bands because such a move would
be bound to result in much higher
bills for millions of homeowners
whose houses have gone up in value
over the past 30 years.
Committee chairman Labour MP
Clive Betts said: ‘There is a discon-
nect between services taxpayers
expect local authorities to provide
‘A revaluation is
long overdue’
By Steve Doughty
Social Affairs Correspondent
Girl with An
is daughter
On video: Prince Andrew waves to Miss Keating, circled, from Epstein’s front door in 2010
From Katherine Rushton in LA
and Rebecca English in London
THE daughter of a former
Australian prime minister was
identified yesterday as the
mystery brunette with Prince
Andrew in a video.
The prince was seen waving to
Katherine Keating, 37, at the door of
the mansion of disgraced financier
Jeffrey Epstein.
The footage was taken at the Manhat-
tan townhouse in December 2010 – after
paedophile Epstein had been placed on
the child sex offenders register.
A source told the Daily Mail last night
that Miss Keating had been ‘deeply
upset’ at the speculation the video had
prompted, explaining through a source
that she had simply been visiting
Andrew for tea.
The footage has raised fresh questions
about the prince’s judgment, given his
apparent willingness to associate him-
self with a convicted paedophile at the
house where some of his crimes were
alleged to have taken place.
Miss Keating was one of a number of
young women photographed leaving or
entering the mansion.
But sources insisted Miss Keating
- whose father Paul Keating was Aus-
tralian prime minister from 1991 to 1996 - did not meet Epstein during the visit.
‘Invited her for
a cup of tea’
JEFFREY Epstein signed a
new will two days before
he killed himself. The pae-
dophile set up a secretive
trust on August 8 and
named his brother Mark as
sole potential heir.
Epstein’s will put the
value of his estate at
$577million (£458million)
and it was filed in the US
Virgin Islands – where
Epstein owned two private
islands – to avoid scrutiny.
Two days later, on August
10, Epstein was found
hanged in his cell in a New
York prison.
The new will is likely to
complicate dozens of law-
suits expected to be filed
against his estate.
There are no details
about beneficiaries as the
trust, called the 1953 Trust,
after the year Epstein was
born, does not have to dis-
close them. A lawyer said
the trust was set up that
way for ‘privacy reasons’.
Assets include Epstein’s
New York mansion, listed
as worth $55million. He
had $56million in cash and
$194million in hedge funds
and investments.
His Caribbean islands
Great St James and Little
St James are listed as
worth $63million and
$22million, and his cars
boats and aircraft $18mil-
lion. His antiques and other
valuables, including a
painting of Bill Clinton in a
blue dress that hung inside
his New York mansion, are
still being assessed.
Three more women are
suing Epstein’s estate,
claiming they were
recruited to provide mas-
sages for the financier and
then sexually abused.
Two of the women say
they were 17, at the time,
the third was 20. It brings
the number of civil cases
against the estate since his
suicide to at least five.
MPs call
for huge
council
tax rises in
the South
and the level of service possible
under current Government funding.
‘People expect well-maintained
roads, regular refuse collections
and cultural services, yet funding
rarely stretches beyond meeting
the urgent needs of social care.
‘The battle to meet ever-increas-
ing demands for social care has left
few further sources of revenue to
divert towards it and will now need
a dedicated funding solution.
‘The haphazard approach to
broader funding has created an
opaque source of revenue, partially
funded by tax systems that don’t
spread the burden equally.’
Council tax bills are based on the
values of properties when the tax
was introduced, in April 1991. The
cheapest Band A homes were worth
less than £40,000 then, and the
most expensive Band H homes
were those worth over £320,000.
A benchmark Band D home in
England, worth £68,001-£88,000 in
1991, now pays on average a council
tax bill of £1,750 a year. However,
current property values bear no
comparison with 1991 prices.
In the South East an average
home is worth nearly £319,000 –
three-and-a-half times its 1991
value, a level that was at the top of
the range in 1991. In the North East