(London) Queen Elizabeth II had amassed a personal fortune estimated at 370 million pounds (558 million CDN dollars) by the Sunday Timesduring his 70-year reign, some of which is known and run by the government, but some of which is private.
Posted at 10:08 p.m.
The sovereign benefited from a royal lifestyle supported by the British taxpayer but her relatives and she also benefited from the income of the gigantic private heritage, the details of which are not fully known.
Sovereign allocation
The expenses related to the official activities of representing the Queen or members of her family come from an annual allocation (“sovereign grant”) from the Treasury, which reaches 86 million pounds for 2021-2022 (130 million CAN), of which an extension granted for ten years for the renovation of Buckingham Palace (34 million pounds for 2021-2022).
Without counting the extension, it corresponds to 15% of the profits of the heritage of the British Crown (“The crown estate”), a colossal stock of land, real estate, wind farm licenses, among others, and whose revenue is returned to the Treasury since an act of 1760.
The sovereign allocation is used in particular to remunerate more than 500 Windsor employees.
The private purse
The privy purse refers to the queen’s private income. They come from the receipts of some 650 million pounds of assets (land, financial titles, etc.) — the equivalent of 980 million CAN) — from the Duchy of Lancaster, property of royalty since the Middle Ages.
It includes some 315 residential real estate and high-end commercial properties, and thousands of hectares of agricultural land.
The income from this colossal heritage amounted for the last fiscal year to around 24 million pounds, which the queen distributes in part to her relatives. These private incomes are taxed as long as they are not used for official tasks.
“The Queen uses this money for her maintenance costs of her properties at Balmoral and Sandringham, two very expensive private residences”, but of which she is the owner, notes David McClure, author of a book on the finances of the Crown (The Queen’s True worth).
“She also uses this money to subsidize other members of the royal family who do not receive public money,” he continued, interviewed by AFP.
While some of the money is redistributed to his children, Andrew, out of favor due to his ties to indicted sex and pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, is unlikely to receive as much since stepping back from the monarchy.
Private properties
Balmoral Castle is valued at around 100 million pounds (151 million CAN), and his country mansion, Sandringham, at 50 million (75 million CAN).
Some items in the Royal Collection also belong to the Queen privately, such as a stamp collection started by King George V.
Queen Elizabeth also had a well-known passion for horses and her personal stable has earned her over the years more than 7 million pounds according to the equestrian site myracing.com.
The famous Crown Jewels, valued at some £3 billion, symbolically belong to the Queen and are automatically passed on to the next monarch.
Tax heavens
The Queen’s fortune has been splashed by the Paradise Papers scandal, an investigation into large-scale tax avoidance practices among powerful people and celebrities.
These revelations from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in 2017 claimed that Elizabeth II had, via the Duchy of Lancaster, around ten million pounds of assets in funds in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, overseas territories of the United Kingdom or treated as tax havens.
not so rich
At 370 million pounds, Elizabeth II came far in the ranking of the great fortunes in the United Kingdom, the “Rich List” of the Times, ranking which refers, being dominated by the brothers Sri and Gopi Hinduja (28 billion pounds).
She was also much less rich than the King of Thailand, whose fortune is estimated at 30 billion dollars, the Sultan of Brunei (20 billion) or King Salman of Saudi Arabia (5 billion dollars, according to the site celebritynetworth.com).