In 70 years of reign, Queen Elizabeth II has accumulated a personal fortune estimated at 370 million pounds, according to the Sunday Times.

Part of this colossal sum is known and managed by the government, but another remains private.

The sovereign benefited from a royal lifestyle paid for 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 reached 86 million pounds for 2021-2022 (99 million euros ), including an extension granted for ten years for the renovation of Buckingham Palace (34 million pounds for 2021-2022).

In addition, the allowance also corresponds to 15% of the profits of the British Crown Heritage, a huge park of land, real estate, wind farm licenses, among others.

The receipts from this heritage have been returned by the Queen to the Public Treasury since an act of law in 1760.

The sovereign allocation is used, in particular, to remunerate more than 500 Windsor employees.

  • Personal income

The private purse refers to the queen's private income.

They come from the receipts of some 650 million pounds of assets (land, financial titles, etc.) of the Duchy of Lancaster, property of royalty since the Middle Ages.

It includes some 315 residential properties, 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.

A fraction of this money is redistributed to his children.

Except Andrew, in disgrace because of his links with the financier indicted for sex crimes and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who should not receive as much since he stepped back from the monarchy.

"The Queen also uses this money for her maintenance costs for the properties of Balmoral and Sandringham, two very expensive private residences", but which she owns, notes David McClure, author of "The Queen's True worth", a book on the Crown finances.

These private incomes are taxed as long as they are not used for official tasks. 

  • Castles, jewels, horses...

Balmoral Castle is valued at around £100 million.

While the value of his country mansion, Sandringham is estimated at 50 million.

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 more than £7 million over the years, according to horse racing website 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 the Bermuda, overseas territories of the United Kingdom treated as tax havens.

  • A not so rich queen

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, a ranking which refers and whose first place goes to the brothers Sri and Gopi Hinduja, at the head of a conglomerate, for 28 billion pounds.

In the world of sovereigns, she was much less rich, for example, 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 celebritynetworth.com).

With AFP  

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