Happy Birthday Prince Albert of Monaco. (Just don’t expect a card from your accountant…)

A royal birthday in the billionaires’ playground of Monaco is normally an occasion for celebration, fireworks, civic congratulations, a family appearance on the balcony of the Prince’s Palace to greet the crowds. 

And a rendition of Happy Birthday from by a military band in dazzling-outfits.

But this year Prince Albert, who is 66 today, could be forgiven for wanting to keep a low profile thanks to a humiliating furore about the House of Grimaldi’s spending habits, which are eye-watering even by the lavish standards of Monte Carlo.

The row erupted after Prince Albert dismissed his previously trusted accountant, the bespectacled Claude Palmero, who for two decades had managed the finances of the family.  

The scorned Mr Palmero – who was fired after allegations of financial impropriety at the Palace were posted on an anonymous website – has proved to be rather less mild-mannered than he first seemed.

Excerpts from five of his densely-written black-bound notebooks containing astonishing details of the Grimaldis’ spending habits have found their way into the hands of the French media and respected French newspaper, Le Monde

Among the more sensational revelations, according to Le Monde, are the spending habits of Albert’s wife, Princess Charlene, 46, a former swimmer who as Charlene Wittstock represented South Africa at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

Palmero’s notebooks record that despite her generous allowance of £1.2 million a year, the princess – the mother of Albert’s twin nine-year-old children Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella – has been bailed out repeatedly.

This includes a payment of £60,000 before they were married in 2011. It was widely reported that she had cold feet before the ceremony and had even booked a plane ticket back to South Africa.

Mr Palmero’s notebooks show that on one day in April 2016, the princess received £70,000 in cash, ‘less than the year before, but still far too much,’ and in 2017 there was £500,000 ‘to pay off her overdraft’.

Two years later, the speed at which Princess Charlene apparently burned through money so worried the Prince’s accountant that he wrote in his notes: ‘It’s crazy! I have no control over the Princess’ spending.’ 

In 2020, Palmero recorded a further ‘one-off payment’ of £171,000, plus £4,200 in cash.

 Charlene, who was raised outside Johannesburg by her photocopier salesman father and swimming coach mother, poured nearly £2 million into renovating a holiday house in Corsica and redecorating her office, it is suggested.

The notebooks also show that she rented another house in Corsica and spent time there apart from Albert.

Meanwhile, Charlene’s family, in particular her brother Sean with whom she runs a charity, also benefitted from Albert’s spectacular largesse, with Sean receiving £786,000 to buy a house in 2022. 

He now runs a coffee shop in Monaco.

The Wittstock family are not alone in receiving help. 

The notebooks show that the prince’s two sisters, Stéphanie and Caroline, are paid annual allowances of £680,000 and £770,000 respectively, ‘to manage their day-to-day’.

The head of Monaco’s ruling Grimaldi dynasty since 2005, Albert is the only son of Prince Rainier III and former Hollywood star Grace Kelly and has a personal fortune estimated at £2 billion.

The family has controlled the enclave on the Cote D’Azur since the 13th century. 

His exotic lifestyle in his younger years earned him the soubriquet ‘the playboy prince’ and his many rumoured conquests are said to include supermodels Naomi Campbell Carla Bruni, Claudia Schiffer and Janice Dickinson, singer Kylie Minogue, actresses Bo Derek and Brooke Shields, as well as actor Roger Moore’s daughter Deborah – though the truth of the stories has never been established.

Even as he approached his 50s, Albert was yet to marry or produce a legitimate heir to the throne – which under the state’s constitution would precipitate a crisis that would see the Principality of Monaco revert to French rule.

He did, however, sire at least two acknowledged illegitimate children, Alexandre, by former Air France air hostess turned fashion designer Nicole Coste, born in 2003; and Jazmin, by American waitress turned California estate agent Tamara Rotolo, who met Albert while on holiday in Monaco A bit part acrtress, Jazmin was born in 1993.

Albert’s youthful exuberance is also proving expensive. 

According to Le Monde, Jazmin, 31, receives £73,000 every three months – despite not being an official member of the Monaguesque royal family. 

Mr Palmero noted she was given £4,200 for her 18th birthday and a flat in New York worth £2.6 million seven years later.

He also noted that the palace was paying for kidnap and ransom insurance for Alexandre, 20.

Alexandre’s mother meanwhile, receives funding for her fashion business, to the tune of ‘getting on for £850m a year – including £300,000 to open a store in Knightsbridge, London.

Libération newspaper, which also interviewed Palmero, reported that Albert kept a private BNP bank account labelled AG (standing for Albert Grimaldi), allowing him to transfer money to the former girlfriends and their children without Charlene’s knowledge.

Nicole Coste demanded a flat, the notebooks show, which was to be ‘entirely in Alexandre’s name’ since ‘Nicole fears big problems with Charlene’ if Albert died. The prince’s name had to be kept out of the deal ‘at all costs’, Palmero wrote.

The notebooks further record Palmero’s alarm at the number of staff the palace employed illegally. These included Charlene’s personal cook, paid €300 a day in cash, and Filipino nannies, paid just £90 a day.

Le Monde also reported on the existence of ‘special funds’ that were allocated up to £500,000 a year for ‘secret missions’ and ‘parallel activities’ – such as paying a police officer a retainer for ‘useful information’ and ‘recovering compromising photos’.

According to Mr Palmero’s notes, Princess Charlene, who is 20 years younger than her husband, spent four months in a hospital in 2021/2 for ‘deep fatigue’ – which has added to speculation that life as a Grimaldi princess is not as happy and carefree as you might imagine.

Charlene took an extended break with her family in South Africa just after Albert was hit with yet another paternity suit. In September 2020, a teenager from Brazil claimed in a handwritten note to have been conceived during a round-the-world love affair in 2004.

The matter was due to come to court in Milan, but was dropped. A spokesman for the Prince said it was a ‘hoax’.

Charlene spent most of 2021 away from her husband and children in her native South Africa and shortly after her return to Monaco she was admitted to a treatment facility in Switzerland for exhaustion, both ’emotional and physical’. 

Charlene missed the seventh birthday of her twins Gabriella and Jacques and her tenth wedding anniversary with Albert.

So it’s fair to say that the marriage has not always been as sunny as the Mediterranean weather.

Even their fairytale wedding in 2011 was dogged by rumours of a last-minute hitch after Charlene, 20 years Albert’s junior, reportedly tried to flee the country before the big day.

There was speculation that Charlene had gone so far as to book flights back to her native South Africa and was prevented from leaving when her passport was confiscated.

So when Albert and Charlene Wittstock finally uttered I do – or ‘oui’ to be precise – under the gaze of European royalty, billionaires and celebrity friends, there was a collective sigh of relief, though the bride was photographed wiping a tear from her eye as the couple left the church.

Nevertheless, in 2014, the couple announced their ‘immense joy’ that Charlene was pregnant. 

Twins Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella were born on December 10 in 2014. Gabriella was first to be born by a few minutes, but under Monaco’s law of male primogeniture, Jacques is the heir apparent who will maintain the principality’s independence for at least another generation.

And recently the often tense relationship was said be becoming calmer and happier as Charlene, fortified by her devout Catholicism – she was brought up a protestant and converted to the Roman church in order to marry – has finally come to terms with her gilded if rather unconventional life.

She also enjoys the support of her brothers Sean and Gareth, 42, who moved to Monaco to ‘make sure his sister was being looked after’ a decade ago.

And earlier this year, MailOnline revealed that her father, Mike, 76, and mother, Lynette, 63, had moved more than 8,000 miles from their home in the suburbs of Johannesburg to live permanently in an imposing property in La Turbie, a short drive across the border in France.

‘It has made the world of difference,’ said a palace source in Monte Carlo who has known Albert and Charlene since before their wedding.

‘The Wittstocks,’ house is just a few minutes’ drive away from Charlene, and they meet all the time. They make her feel safe and secure, and remind her of the far more carefree life she enjoyed in South Africa.

Albert, too, is calming down. Last year he posed for a touching photograph for the first time with all four of his acknowledged children.

However the vengeance of Claude Palmero threatens to cause more marital discord.

Prince Albert’s deep displeasure was reflected in a stinging statement to Le Monde in which he said Palmero’s actions, ‘show his true nature and the little respect … he has for the family and the principality’, adding: ‘His duties imposed on him an absolute discretion, which he has violated.’

The prince continued, ‘I exercised my right to choose the asset manager of my choice. Events have shown how much this decision was the right one.’