‘Migrant hotel king’ who is now on Britain’s rich list
£750m tycoon is reeling in £3.5m a DAY... (funded by the taxpayer)
THE ‘king’ of Britain’s migrant hotels has seen his wealth soar to £750million, catapulting him into the Rich List for the first time.
Graham King is believed to be making £3.5million a day from the taxpayer for transporting asylum seekers and providing them with temporary housing during the migrant crisis.
The former caravan park and disco tycoon is the 221st richest person in the UK, according to the latest Sunday Times annual rich list.
The Mail revealed last year how in 2021 Mr King, a former small-time Essex businessman, earned £25million by housing migrants – receiving more of Britain’s foreign aid budget than Ghana. That figure more than doubled to £60million the following year as
‘Punished by the taxman’
the number of cross-Channel arrivals soared. His firm was paid £1.3billion in 12 months for accommodating and transporting arrivals.
He is expected to become Britain’s first immigration industry billionaire because he has a contract with the Home Office that will last until September 2029.
Alfie Best, Britain’s richest gipsy, has a fortune of £947million, according to the Sunday Times, having invested in US-style caravan parks and billing them as a solution to Britain’s social housing crisis. His wealth is up £202million from £745million.
It comes only weeks after he emigrated to tax haven Monaco. He told the Mail yesterday: ‘It is no longer Great Britain but Broken Britain. If you are a successful businessman, you are punished by the taxman and I have had enough.’
Britain’s 350 richest individuals and families together hold combined wealth of £795.36billion, according to the new data.
Some have joked it could be called ‘ The Rishi List’ after the PM and his wife Akshata Murty’s fortune surged by more than £ 120million to £ 651million. It makes the Sunaks richer than the King, who saw his fortune rise by £10million to £610million.
The Hindujas have again topped the list and are worth £2billion more than a year ago, with an extraordinary net worth of £37.2billion in 2024. The family, led by Indian-British billionaire businessman Gopi Hinduja, boss of the Indian conglomerate Hinduja Group, continue to make money hand over fist from media and finance to energy and cars.
But a number of the highestprofile billionaires saw their fortunes shrink. Manchester United investor and Ineos founder Sir Jim Ratcliffe was the biggest faller, with his net worth dropping by over £6billion to £23.52 billion.
Vacuum cleaner tycoon Sir James Dyson was second, witnessing a drop to £20.8billion from £23billion. Sir Richard Branson saw his wealth fall to £2.4billion from £4.2billion in 2022. The overall number of UK billionaires appears to have peaked.
It was 177 in 2022, before dropping to 171 and falling again to 165 this year, driven by some seeing their private wealth contract amid high borrowing rates and others leaving the country.
Robert Watts, compiler of the rich list, said: ‘We’ll have to wait and see whether we have now reached peak billionaire, and what that means for our economy.’