A British lawyer for dozens of oligarchs is holding the secret of who lent Prince Harry and Meghan Markle a Canadian mansion for their winter getaway, DailyMail.com can disclose.

Alastair Tulloch is known among the Russian elite as the go-to London attorney for billionaires and well-connected politicians, using complex corporate structures in secretive jurisdictions around the world.

And until now, the 64-year-old has managed to remain largely out of the public eye, despite having managed the companies of at least 27 Russian and Eastern European oligarchs and business tycoons as well as firms linked to Elton John and Kylie Minogue.

But after Harry and Meghan refused to reveal the mystery owner of the $14 million Vancouver Island mansion they have been staying at for almost two months, an investigation by DailyMail.com unearthed a paper trail leading to Tulloch.

The lawyer has also kept made no comment about his anonymous client, failing to respond to questions DailyMail.com asked him about the property despite a new Canadian transparency law coming into force in May.

That will compel him to reveal the owner of the mansion in a public register in British Columbia - forcing Meghan and Harry's secret into the open.

Their secrecy has already raised questions over whether they are paying for their accommodation, and why they are so keen for the owner's name to be kept secret.

The property is currently being guarded by police officers from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and British royal protection officers from Scotland Yard.

David Foster, the Canadian music producer, told DailyMail.com that he is a friend of the owner and arranged the royal couple's stay.

But now the other person who knows their name is revealed as a a low-profile attorney whose clients have included Vladimir Putin's former right hand man, Igor Shuvalov, multi-millionaire former KGB spy, Alexander Lebedev, along with Evgeny, his media mogul son.

Bolthole: Meghan Markle, Prince Harry and their baby son Archie, have been lent a $14 million mansion in North Saanich, British Columbia by a mystery owner. The lawyer who knows the secret of his identity is revealed today by DailyMail.com

Luxurious getaway: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle spent their first Christmas with baby Archie in Mille Fleurs, $14.1 million waterfront mansion near Victoria, British Columbia. But they have refused to say who offered them the accommodation and whether it was free. Now its link to a London lawyer is revealed

The man who knows Meghan and Harry's secret: Alastair Tulloch, a low-profile London lawyer is the go-to legal adviser for a string of oligarchs - and among his clients is the mystery owner of the Canadian mansion where they have fled after quitting royal life

Uncovered: The document which shows how Alastair Tulloch knows the secret Meghan and Harry refuse to reveal - who owns the Canadian waterfront mansion they have fled to

Facebook investor: Billionaire Yuri Milner made his fortune with Mail.ru and has since invested on behalf of Kremlin-controlled banks in Facebook and Twitter. He is a client of Alastair Tulloch and has stayed at Mille Fleurs, shortly after it was bought by the secretive owner, but says it is not his or his family's property. In 2015, Mark Zuckerberg attended Milner's Breakthrough Prize ceremony in Mountain View, California in a sign of their relationship

One-time right hand man: Igor Shuvalov was Vladimir Putin's first deputy prime minister and therefore one of the Kremlin's most senior figures. He is a client of Alastair Tulloch and has had his business dealings scrutinized in an official British inquiry into Russian corruption

Client: Alexander Popov, who made his fortune as a co-founder of Mail.ru, is among those who Alstair Tulloch works for

Clients: Alexander Lebedev (in gray) and his son Yevgeny (in white, left) are two of Alastair Tulloch's longest-term clients. Tulloch was on the board with both men of their Raisa Gorbachev Foundation, names for the late wife of Mikhail Gorbachev (second from left)

Tulloch has also worked for Yuri Milner, who bought more than eight percent of Facebook and five percent of Twitter using cash from Kremlin-controlled banks; Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the one-time wealthiest man in Russia who was jailed by Putin for eight years until 2013; and Andrey Vavilov, Boris Yeltsin's former deputy finance minister and secretary of state who was accused of embezzling $231 million from state funds.

Tulloch directs 10 oligarchs' charities, including Russian billionaire investor Alexander Mamut's Mamut Foundation, Russian internet giant Mail.ru co-founder Mikhail Vinchel's Vinchel Foundation, and his Mail.ru partner Milner's Milner Foundation.

Company documents show Tulloch even helped set up Elton John's record label Rocket Music Entertainment Group, and the lawyer directs a holding company for a multi-million west London property co-owned by Kylie Minogue.

Tulloch has kept a low profile for decades as a go-to corporate lawyer for oligarchs.

HOW MANSION OWNER KEEPS NAME SECRET STEP ONE The mystery owner finds a property whose ownership can be doubly cloaked. Bernadette Wolfswinkel, the ex-wife of a disgraced Arizona financier has had Mille Fleurs on the market with Sotheby's since 2012, for $18 million CAD ($14 million). But she is not selling the home itself. It is the property of Towner Bay Country Club. Wolfswinkel (right) is selling her shares in the Towner Bay Country Club. Those shares give the buyer the keys to Mille Fleurs. That means the public registry of property ownership does not name the real owner of Mille Fleurs. STEP TWO The mystery owner sets up JEMC Management Limited in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). The names of directors and shareholders of BVI companies do not have to be disclosed. STEP THREE The mystery owner uses JEMC Management to pay a reported $18CAD million for Wolfswinkel's shares. He gives JEMC's address as C/O Tulloch & Co, a firm of lawyers in Mayfair, London, run by Alastair Tulloch STEP FOUR The owner goes a step further to keep his name secret by not becoming one of the directors of the country club - which many other owners are. STEP FIVE The mystery owner makes sure that no public documents are connected to Mille Fleurs other than it being part of the country club. STEP FOUR The mystery owner gets the benefit of tough Canadian privacy laws which say that planning documents with the names of property-holders cannot be disclosed to the public. STEP FIVE Alastair Tulloch does not respond to a request to name the owner - and the spokeswoman for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex refuses to. Advertisement

But acting for the owner of Mille Fleurs, the Canadian mansion Harry and Meghan have used as a hideaway since December, has thrust him into the spotlight.

The former royals added to the extraordinary secrecy around the lavish property by declining to answer questions about their host.

But DailyMail.com has now unravelled Tulloch's role in the secret ownership of the Mille Fleurs, the secluded, French-inspired $14 million property near Victoria, British Columbia, that housed Harry and Meghan as they celebrated their first Christmas with baby Archie and where they plotted their split from the Royal Family.

Usually real estate owners in British Columbia can be found in the state's Land Title and Survey Authority.

But the title for the eight-bedroom waterfront property shows that the mansion and its neighbors on the private road in North Saanich, Vancouver Island, are held by a local company called The Towner Bay Country Club Limited.

The Country Club creates the first layer of secrecy around the mystery mansion.

Homeowners on the Country Club's 34-acre lot buy their homes by purchasing shares in the company, avoiding putting their names on a land title and keeping their identity behind a corporate veil.

The Country Club's shareholder register, accessed by DailyMail.com, revealed the mansion owner is JEMC Management Limited, a firm in the opaque tax haven of the British Virgin Islands (BVI).

BVI is a favorite location for the wealthy to shelter their assets, due to its low taxes and strict privacy laws that keep both the directors and shareholders of companies registered there anonymous.

The only clue to the ultimate owner is the BVI firm's service address: Tulloch & Co, in Mayfair, Central London.

The law practice's five-story townhouse office is the registered address for 40 UK companies and many more offshore firms in secretive tax havens, while Tulloch himself appears on the documents of 111 current and former UK firms, some of them owned by the 27 Russian and Eastern European oligarchs and business tycoons identified by DailyMail.com.

The lawyer did not respond to DailyMail.com's questions about Mille Fleurs' owner despite two new laws due to come into force this year that will render the secretive ownership structure obsolete- and both of them prompted by the use of secretive ownership structures.

In 2018 the UK parliament passed an act which requires British overseas territories such as the BVI to establish publicly-accessible registers of the true owners behind shell companies by December 31, 2020.

In a February 2019 report, the UK foreign affairs select committee described reducing corporate secrecy in British overseas territories as 'a matter of national security', and that 'those who seek to undermine our security and that of our allies must not be able to use the OTs [overseas territories] to launder their funds.'

Hidden property ownership has also been targeted by British Columbia's government. The province's Land Owner Transparency Act, passed last year, will force all companies that hold properties in the region to disclose to the government who the ultimate owners of the houses are – and the list will be published in a public registry beginning in late Spring.

'For too long, people in B.C. were using shell companies, trusts and partnerships to hide true owners of property,' a BC Ministry of Finance spokesman told DailyMail.com.

Seafront getaway: Just outside Victoria, British Columbia, Mille Fleurs is a sprawling home with scenic views, indoor recreation facilities - and a secretive owner who has gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent his name becoming public. Later this year such steps will fall foul of a transparency law

Luxury property: The French country-inspired mansion was listed by Sotheby's in 2012 and sold in 2014. But its owner's identity and whether he gave Meghan and Harry use of the property for free remains a mystery

Grandeur: The main house is 11,416 square feet with five bedrooms and eight bathrooms and a 2,349 square foot guest cottage with three beds and two baths. It is where Meghan and Harry put the final touches to their 'Megxit' plan

And here's who owns it: How the ownership of Mille Fleurs is cloaked by being registered in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven where companies do not disclose the names of directors and shareholders

He added that the British Columbia's Expert Panel on Money Laundering in Real Estate identified a beneficial land ownership registry as the single most important step it could take to help tax authorities and law enforcement agencies.

There is no suggestion that the owner of the house has engaged in such activity.

Tulloch has worked for for wealthy Russian clients, including close Putin ally and former Russian first deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov.

The high-ranking politician claimed in an anti-corruption filing in Russia that he rented two adjacent London apartments with a view of the Thames, in a block owned by the Crown Estate - the portfolio of property which helps fund the British royal family and is held in the Queen's name.

But his spokesman, Alexander Machevsky, has said the high-ranking politician bought the properties in 2002 and 2004 for a total £3.56 million ($4.66 million) using a BVI company, Central Cove Limited, managed by Tulloch & Co.

The transaction was scrutinized by the British parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee in a 2018 inquiry into Russian corruption in the UK, after a former Russian spy and British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury. Shuvalov was not accused of any wrongdoing by the inquiry.

One of Tulloch's longest-term clients is Alexander Lebedev, a KGB spy-turned-oligarch, based at the Russian embassy in London during the 1980s. Lebedev is now the owner of one of Russia's largest banks, as well as buying two UK newspapers, the Evening Standard and The Independent. The Independent is now solely a news website.

Tulloch is a director of Lebedev and his son Evgeny's UK company Lebedev Holdings Limited, which owns their London newspaper The Evening Standard. He also helps to run the Lebedev Foundation, the family's charity.

Another of Tulloch's clients, Milner, has issued a public denial of owning Mille Fleurs, but admitted he has stayed there once.

Milner, a billionaire, who was born in Russia and has Israeli family, lives with his former model and artist wife Julia in a $100 million compound in the Los Altos Hills near Silicon Valley.

As well as previously owning significant stakes in Twitter and Facebook, he is known as a major investor who has put funds into in Spotify, Groupon, Airbnb, WhatsApp and 23andMe.

Documents leaked in 2017 from a Bermuda law firm, dubbed the 'paradise papers', lifted the lid on a maze of offshore companies which had obscured the true source of hundreds of millions of dollars of Milner's investments in Facebook and Twitter.

Pro-democracy activists in Russia were dismayed to learn that the authoritarian state had helped Milner buy more than eight percent of Facebook and five percent of Twitter.

A Russian state-controlled bank, VTB, which is often used for deals to further the Kremlin's interests, had provided $191 million to Milner's company DST Investments 3 for its stake in Twitter, the documents showed.

Gazprom Investholding, another Kremlin-controlled firm, financed Milner's Facebook deal via its subsidiary, Kanton Services.

Well-connected man: Yuri Milner (left) is a billionaire who has met David Foster - who told DailyMail.com he arranged Harry and Meghan's Canadian stay - and his wife Katharine McPhee. He also attended 'Google camp,' the elite get-together, as did Prince Harry. Alastair Tulloch has been his lawyer for a series of his business dealings

Superyacht: Yuri Milner has denied owning both Mille Fleurs and the Andromeda, a lavish $250 million vessel whose owner and Milner share a PO box in a tax haven

Hi-tech client: Dmitry Grishin was co-founder and CEO of Mail.Ru and also uses Alastair Tulloch's services. He was worth $167 million according to a 2012 interview he gave, where he announced a $25 million investment in his robotics company was 15% of his net worth

WHY KEEPING YOUR NAME SECRET IS BEING BANNED IN B.C. Pat Poitevin, co-founder of the Canadian Centre of Excellence for Anti-Corruption and a leading authority on secrecy concerns, declined to comment on Meghan and Harry's situation specifically but explained why British Columbia is making owners identify themselves and preventing the use of shell companies to conceal ownership. He told DailyMail.com that shell companies are used legitimately, but are also abused to hide the source of funds and 'launder money.' 'They will use shell companies to hide the source of the funds and how it's being funneled to the ultimate beneficiary,' he said. 'People think it's just the Bahamas or the Seychelles where they have shell companies. But some of the major jurisdictions where the easiest way to funnel money is to start shell companies are the United States and Canada.' Starting a company requires less proof of identity than getting a library card, he said and the potential tax losses over the years are vast. Advertisement

Milner has said in previous interviews that the money received from the Russian government was the same as that of any other investor, and Gazprom and VTB said the deals were not politically motivated.

'We are getting money, and we are putting them in Facebook and Twitter. We are making money for our limited partners, and we are giving money back to them. For me, it's a commercial arrangement,' the billionaire told the New York Times.

Tulloch has deep business ties with Milner, with his law firm previously acting as a service address for both UK and U.S. arms of the oligarch's flagship investment firm DST.

The Russian billionaire is also the only one of Tulloch's past or current clients to be linked to the Vancouver Island mansion.

Canadian music producer David Foster told DailyMail.com that he is friends with the mansion owner, and that he and his wife, Meghan's schoolfriend Katharine McPhee, arranged for the royal couple's Christmas stay.

Foster said he also arranged for Milner to rent the home for a few weeks in 2014.

Five neighbors of the North Saanich house said the owner was a Russian businessman, and three said they believed Milner was the owner.

Foster insisted that it is not Milner, but refused to reveal the friend's identity.

Milner categorically denied ownership in a statement issued through both his US and UK aides, saying that neither he, nor any of his family or any entity affiliated with him or his family has any stake in the mansion.

A spokeswoman for Milner told DailyMail.com: 'Neither Yuri Milner nor any family member nor any entity affiliated with him or his family owns this Canadian house or JEMC Management Limited. However, Mr Milner rented the house for a short period of time about five years ago and he is currently not renting it.'

Milner has also denied ownership of a superyacht named Andromeda, and has also issued public denials of any ownership in the $250 million vessel.

Speculation over Milner's ownership of the boat was sparked by the discovery that the holding company for Andromeda is Proxima Y Limited, a Cayman Islands firm which shares the same PO box as the oligarch's offshore branch of DST Global.

Rumors were also stoked by the holding company's name, evocative of Milner's space exploration project to send miniature spacecraft to the star Proxima Centauri in search of alien life.

Home: Alastair Tulloch and his wife Hilary have this home in North London. He uses its address on public documents

Office: Tulloch & Co is located in London's Mayfair, in this building. It is the address given for the business of a string of Russians - and the mysterious owner of Meghan and Harry's vacation home

We are family and business: Alastair Tulloch's daughter Emma is a director and shareholder in a company with a correspondence address given as his law firm in Mayfair, Central London

We are family and business: Alastair Tulloch's wife Hilary, 59, with whom he shares a $2.6 million North London home has also been a director or shareholder of three companies registered at her husband's law firm. She is a craniosacral therapist, a 'therapy' with no supporting medical evidence. His son Iain, 27,is also director and shareholder in a company with a correspondence address at Tulloch & Co.

Tulloch, who lives in a $2.6 million North London home with his wife Hilary, 59, grew up in apartheid-era South Africa attending a private boys school in Grahamstown.

He was educated at the University of Oxford and qualified as a solicitor - one of the two types of lawyer in the UK - in 1980.

Between 1987, which was before the fall of Communism and the Berlin Wall, and 1998 he became a specialist in the affairs of wealthy Russians and Eastern Europeans, according to a biography on his firm's website.

WHAT DAILYMAIL.COM ASKED THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF SUSSEX... AND WHAT THEY SAID IN REPLY DAILYMAIL.COM ASKED FOR ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS EARLIER THIS MONTH: What is the name of the owner of Mille Fleurs? Were the Duke and Duchess of Sussex aware of the owner's identity before accepting their invitation? Were the Duke and Duchess of Sussex aware of how the owner holds Mille Fleurs? Did the Duke and Duchess of Sussex pay for their stay? If so how was the amount they paid calculated? AND MEGHAN AND HARRY'S SPOKESWOMAN SARAH LATHAM REPLIED: 'Thanks, I'm not commenting or guiding on the Canadian property' Advertisement

He then joined law firm Eversheds for a year before setting up his own firm, Tulloch & Co, in 1999.

In a pamphlet for a 2007 wealth management conference at which he was a panelist, Tulloch was described as having fulfilled his 'life long aim of establishing his own law firm focused on Eastern Europe', adding that he 'attempts to speak Russian and travels extensively throughout Eastern Europe.'

The conference, the International Trusts Congress, focused on topics including 'trustees/fiduciaries increasingly at risk of criminal prosecution', 'Criminal/civil confiscation of assets: The trustees' risk', and 'Family wealth planning'.

In the 20 years after founding Tulloch & Co the attorney has assembled a roster of clients which draws from Putin's inner circle and his political opponents, and particularly from the Russian tech scene.

He has also drawn clients from Ukraine and Bulgaria and company documents make clear that his family is involved in his business.

Though working as a 'craniosacral therapist' according to her Linkedin page, Hilary has also been a director or shareholder of three companies registered at her husband's law firm.

One of the companies, Blackdown Hill Management Limited, was owned by Artemev before being transferred to Hilary in 2017, and appears to be a management company for Aldworth House, a West Sussex mansion formerly owned by 19th Century canonical poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

'Craniosacral therapy' is based on a belief unsupported by medical evidence that the brain makes rhythmic movements, and that diseases can be diagnosed by gently pushing on the patient's head to feel for changes in that rhythm. It has been condemned as quackery by scientists.

Two of Tulloch's four children, Iain, 27, and Emma, 31, are also directors and shareholders in companies with a correspondence address at Tulloch & Co.

Tulloch serves on the board of a well-connected UK charity, the Oxford Russia Fund, which is also registered at the offices of Tulloch & Co.

The charity, which registered an income of $4.32 million last year, says its aim is to provide scholarships for students studying humanities at 20 Russian universities.

Other board members include former Russian deputy prime minister Boris Saltykov, Oxford University chancellor Lord Patten of Barnes, who as Chris Patten was the last British governor of Hong Kong, and the director of the British Film Institute, Anthony Smith.