By Nils Kottmann
Rishi Sunak (42) is not only Britain’s first prime minister with Hindu faith and Indian roots – he is also richer than King Charles (73)!
While the monarch’s private fortune is estimated at the equivalent of 690 million euros, according to the “ Guardians“ be heavy 850 million euros. Also thanks to his wife Akshata Murthy (42), who brought the lion’s share of the money to the glamor marriage.
▶ ︎Because: The Indian is the daughter of tech billionaire Nagavara Murthy (76) and holds almost one percent of his mega-corporation Infosys (77 billion euros market value).
But Rishi Sunak himself is not from bad parents either. Papa Yashvir and Mama Usha were among the elite doctors and pharmacists in Sunak’s hometown of Southampton. They instilled in their son an unconditional desire to climb. He becomes a top student, first at Oxford, then at Stanford, where he also meets his future wife. Sunak also works as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs.
The couple lives a life of luxury. During the week, they reside with their two daughters in a £7 million villa in London’s upscale West End. They spend weekends at the country house in Sunak’s constituency in North Yorkshire. The listed 19th-century estate cost just £2 million.
▶︎ The glamor couple’s gargantuan fortune has been a bane on Sunak’s political career time and time again: In the race to succeed Boris Johnson, his opponents dug up a clip from a BBC documentary that was more than 20 years old. In it, the then 21-year-old student brags about moving in the highest circles: “I have friends from the nobility and from the upper class and I have friends from the working class, well, not from the working class”.
The accusation of his opponents: Sunak is too aloof to understand the problems of ordinary people, he doesn’t even want to have anything to do with them. The heating costs for his pool alone are said to be six times the annual energy bill of an average British family. In the midst of the worst energy crisis in decades, it’s poison for a politician’s reputation.
But the ex-finance minister still prevailed on Sunday against ex-prime minister Boris Johnson (58), whose overthrow he had initiated in the summer. His last opponent, ex-Secretary of Defense Penny Mordaunt (49), then capitulated on Monday morning.
When King Charles appoints him as prime minister on Tuesday, he will swear his oath of office on the Bhagavad Gita, Hinduism’s most sacred scripture – the first head of state in British history.