King Charles III is already richer than his mother, Elizabeth II – 03/05/2023 – World

It is difficult to establish the size of King Charles III’s treasure, even though his personal fortune has been estimated at £1.8 billion (R$ 11.3 billion). The difficulty is that it is divided between his own money, inheritances from Queen Elizabeth II, family reserves, income from his current position as king and funds from the time he was prince.

It is much more than Elizabeth II accumulated in her 70 years of reign. When the Queen died last September, her personal fortune was estimated at £400m (£2.5bn).

But the fortunes of Charles and the royal family are treated as secret information by the monarchy, which is not accountable to the population and still exercises unthinkable privileges for the common Briton.

For example: inheritance tax in the United Kingdom is 40% —in the states of Brazil, it varies between 2% and 8%. But the royal family is exempt and, when Elizabeth II died, her fortune was transmitted to her children without paying a single penny to the public coffers.

To carry out his duties as king, Charles receives a kind of salary, the sovereign subsidy, which is valid for one year. The last one was £86m (R$543m). This money is used for official royal duties such as payroll and household maintenance.

Sovereign subsidy money comes from a monarchy estate fund administered by the Crown Estate. This heritage includes shopping centres, entire streets of the capital London and wind farms, among others. As in the case of inheritance, it does not pay taxes.

The British newspaper The Guardian has published a series of investigative reports in recent weeks to try to establish the size of the royal wealth and, despite saying that it is “impossible to know the total value of his assets”, its estimate of £ 1.8 billion for Charles is twice as large as what the press used to publish.

Until then, the news had resorted to the traditional annual list of the richest in the United Kingdom of the Sunday Times newspaper, and Charles appeared as having £ 600 million (R $ 3.8 billion).

The Guardian carried out a comprehensive audit, with the help of twelve experts, of the king’s estate, from hundreds of properties and jewels, to paintings by Monet and Dalí, Rolls-Royces, rare stamps and £27 million (R$ 170 million) only on horses.

In response to the newspaper, the king’s spokesman said: “While we do not comment on private finance, your figures are a highly creative mix of speculation, guesswork and inaccuracy.”

Be that as it may, part of Charles’s wealth comes from shrewd business dealings from the time he was prince and head of the Duchy of Cornwall. Established in the 14th century, the dukedom was created to generate income for the heir to the British throne.

The then prince transformed the duchy, previously seen as a heap of feudal lands, into a company with a CEO and 150 employees. It is estimated that, in 2020, he received £21 million (R$ 132 million) as profit from this company.

After funding Charles’ expenses for decades, today the duchy is in the hands of Prince William, his son. But in his place, Charles inherited another, that of Lancaster, which is connected with the office of king or queen.

This does not cover security costs, which are paid for by the British government but also kept secret. The government, often allied with the monarch in matters of secrecy, claims that disclosing a single amount to the entire family, without any other details, would constitute an unacceptable threat to their security.

“Royals closely guard the secrets of their financial wealth, insisting that it is ‘private’, even when it is clearly the result of their public duties,” noted the Guardian. “Ask someone else”, “make do” and “you don’t have the right to know” are some of the responses journalists receive when asked about royal finances.

Buckingham Palace claims the royal archives are open to “any serious researcher”. However, they are the private property of the Windsors, who must grant their permission for researchers to examine them.

The wills of any noble family, even obscure members, are censored by judicial decree. The palace argues that royal financial arrangements must “remain private, as they would be for any other individual”.

According to the Guardian, however, “the fog that surrounds these questions comes from confusion over what can legitimately be called the private wealth of the royals, what belongs to the British people and what, as is often the case, ambiguously stretches among the British. two”.