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Rishi Sunak’s ascendance to the top of British politics has rankled some in the U.K. who say the secrecy surrounding his personal wealth is at odds of what 10 Downing needs given the financial turmoil facing the country.
We noted last week, in an article titled “IT’S ONE BIG CLUB: EX-GOLDMAN SACHS BANKER TO BECOME NEXT BRITISH PRIME MINISTER,” that Sunak and his wife are worth nearly $850 million. Sunak married into a technology fortune, but also came from privilege.
As a young boy, he attended Winchester College, an exclusive private school. He continued his education journey at Oxford, then Stanford, where he met his wife and obtained a Master’s Degree in Business administration.
He became a Goldman Sachs banker and led a hedge fund before becoming the head of the Exchequer until stepping down last summer in protest of Boris Johnson, the former prime minister.
His wife’s family founded Infosys, an Indian outsourcing giant, that The New York Times said “complicates” his leadership.
The paper reported that the company has a market value of about $80 billion but “paid record fines and faced repeated accusations that it broke immigration laws and helped companies discriminate against American workers.” (See “SPOTLIGHT: BIGS GETTING BIGGER.”)
His father-in-law Narayana Murthy was seen as a rags-to-riches story and started the firm with $250 in 1981. Trip Chaudhary, of Global Equity Research, told The Independent that Murthy is to India what Steve Jobs was to the U.S.
The Times noted that the company has benefited from $120 million in public sector deals since Sunak joined the British government, including an $8.6 million contract with the Home Office that the paper noted was not previously reported and “despite rules requiring contracts to be made public in 30 days.”
The paper also noted that Sunak failed to report his wife’s financial stake in the company, which the Labor Party has tried to exploit. Angela Rayner, the deputy leader of the party, told the paper, “After years of sleaze and scandal, public confidence in the UK standards system is already at rock bottom.”
The paper noted that Sunak is private about his personal wealth, which includes off-shore accounts and has married into a family that has government contracts. (His wife pulled in $15.3 million in dividends alone from the company in 2022. His wife is an Indian citizen, thus she does not need to pay taxes in the U.K.)
TRENDPOST: Gerald Celente often repeats the famous George Carlin line, “It’s one big club, and you ain’t in it.”
We’re happy The New York Times is comfortable in exposing Sunak’s ties to shady money, but we won’t hold our breath for the paper to cover how Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, obtained a no-show board job at Ukraine’s Burisma that earned him an estimated $3 million dollars… or his other “inside deals.”
A Senate report in August found that Hunter’s job with Burisma created a “potential conflict of interest” for his father, who was heavily involved in U.S. policy toward Ukraine while vice president. And as we reported on 1 February (“BIDEN BANDITS? DIRTY DEALS OR ARE THEY LEGIT?”) President Biden and his family have benefited through the years by securing business deals totaling $31 million with people who have direct ties to the highest levels of China’s spy agency.