The fortune of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, who died Thursday, is estimated at 370 million pounds (more than 420 million dollars), but that wealth was not enough to give her a place on the "Sunday Times" list of the 250 richest people in the United Kingdom in 2022.
Although her collection of jewelry and vast real estate is impressive, the fortune of Queen Elizabeth II, who died at the age of 96, is not measured by that of other royals, so what does she have?
How did she earn her fortune?
official expenses
The British taxpayer finances the king in Britain, and the royal family also gets a large income from huge private holding groups, the details of which are not known.
An annual allocation from the government called a "sovereign grant" covered the official expenses of the Queen and the royal personalities representing her.
In the 2020-2021 financial year, this amounted to about 86 million pounds (about 100 million dollars), including 34.4 million pounds (about 39 million dollars) for renovations at Buckingham Palace in London.
The “sovereign endowment” equals 15% of the profits of the Crown Estate, a huge portfolio that includes some land, real estate and other assets, such as wind farms belonging to the royal family, but managed independently.
The net profits of the Crown Estates are handed over to the Treasury by an agreement concluded in 1760.
The Sovereign Grant was temporarily increased to cover extensive development work at Buckingham Palace and was used to pay hundreds of employees who work for the royal family.
private wallet
The Queen's private income is called the 'private purse', and comes mainly from the 'Duchy of Lancaster' purse, which has been owned by the royal family since the Middle Ages.
Its assets include land, financial investments and real estate worth more than 500 million pounds (about 578 million dollars).
The property includes 315 residential properties, as well as commercial properties in central London and farmland spanning thousands of hectares.
Its net operating income for 2020-2021 was more than £20 million, and the Queen gave part of that to her relatives, and paid taxes on the amount not spent on official duties.
David McClure, author of a book on the finances of the royal family called The Queen's Real Wealth, said:
The Queen is using "these funds to pay for the overheads of the very expensive Balmoral and Sandringham administration", knowing that both properties are owned by the Queen herself.
"Some of the money that is earmarked is also used to support other members of the royal family who do not receive money from the public grant or the sovereign grant," McClure told AFP.
It concerns her daughter Princess Anne and her youngest son Prince Edward and his wife Sophie, Countess of Wessex, in addition to her second son Prince Andrew.
Andrew no longer performs royal duties, and therefore is not expected to receive as generous allowances as in the past.
Andrew caused embarrassment to the royal family because of his previous friendship with American businessman Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of sex trafficking of underage girls, who committed suicide in prison in 2019.
private property
Although all the royal palaces belong to the "crown estates", Elizabeth II owned two properties in her own right: the Balmoral Palace in Scotland valued at £100 million ($115 million), and Sandringham Residence, estimated to be worth £50 million ( about $57 million), and no public funding goes to these two headquarters.
The Queen also owned in her own capacity some of the possessions within the "royal collection", including a set of postage stamps belonging to her grandfather, King George V, valued at 100 million pounds ($115 million).
The Queen also reaped prizes worth more than 7 million pounds (about 8 million dollars) from her passion for horse racing, according to estimates by "my-racing.com", although the figure excludes the cost of expensive horse care.
As for the "crown jewels", valued at about 3 billion pounds (about 3 billion and 470 million dollars), it was symbolically owned by the queen, but its ownership will automatically pass to her successor.
A portrait of the late Queen Elizabeth II in New York (French)
tax havens
The Queen's name was mentioned in the "Paradise Papers" leaked in 2017, which revealed overseas assets owned by wealthy and powerful personalities with the aim of tax evasion.
The documents were published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIG).
It stated that the Queen deposited through the Duchy of Lancaster about 10 million pounds (about 11.58 million dollars) in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, which are British overseas territories that are tax havens.