Sunak first front-line politician to be part of wealth ranking
BRITAIN’S chancellor Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty are among the richest people in the UK with their combined fortune estimated at £730 million.
The couple made their debut in the annual Sunday Times Rich List last Friday (20), ranked 222. The Indian-origin Hinduja brothers are at the top of the list, with an estimated wealth of £28.472 billion.
Sunak, who is married to Indiaborn Murty, the daughter of Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy, is described in the analysis as the first frontline politician to appear in its annual rankings of the UK’s wealthiest in its 34-year history.
The 42-year-old Indian-origin chancellor is a former hedge fund manager who left his financial career to be elected a Conservative party MP in 2015.
“Not so long ago, Sunak, 42, was touted as a future prime minister, a smooth heir to the bumbling Boris Johnson. However, the chancellor’s ambitions have been derailed by last month’s revelation that his wife, Akshata Murty, was a ‘non-dom’, a status that allows those who have their permanent home (domicile) outside the UK to pay tax only on earnings in this country, as well as an annual charge of £30,000,” according to the Sunday Times Rich List report.
For Murty, it notes that the entrepreneur owns 0.93 per cent of Infosys in her own name, which would be a stake worth about £690m.
“It should have delivered about £54m in dividends over the past seven and-a-half years, including £11m in 2021. Without the non-dom status, Murty would have been liable for £20.6m of UK tax on these payments. She has now agreed to pay tax on her 2021 dividends,” it adds.
Last month, Murty had announced that she will pay UK taxes on all her income, including from India, to avoid the row over her nondom status being a “distraction” for her husband.
Sunak had vehemently defended his wife, and has since been given a clean chit by an independent ministerial ethics advisor to the UK government over the issue.