Ministers face legal action in Britain if they do not respond to requests for documents that could reveal how the late queen hid some of her private wealth from the public.
Britain’s transparency watchdog, the Information Commissioner, has threatened legal action against the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), which has delayed the request for two years – The Guardian writes.
The ministry has until the end of October to respond to the freedom of information request, otherwise legal action will be filed against it. The documents may detail how the late king used the secret financial tool to hide shares in the businesses he owned and their value from the public.
The He died in September secondly. The size of Elizabeth’s personal fortune, including her investments, has not been announced. The Sunday Times estimated the amount at 370 million pounds, while Forbes estimated it at 500 million dollars. It is difficult to determine its exact extent, on the one hand, because there is no publicly available database on the property, and on the other hand, because it is not officially II. Elizabeth, but the royal family.
As the Guardian revealed last year, the Queen successfully lobbied the government in the 1970s to change a bill to prevent her quotas from being made public. As a result of pressure, the government created a state-backed front company, the Bank of England Nominees, which appears to have kept the Queen’s private equity and investments secret for more than three decades.
Documents obtained by the Guardian reveal that other members of the royal family may have used the same company to hide their corporate investments. The identities of the other Windsors, as well as the size of their holdings, are also unknown.
The shell company’s directors were required to send annual reports to the government showing the identity of those managing their securities.
The Bank of England Nominees appears to have kept the royal family’s investments secret until 2011 at the latest. According to a Whitehall document issued that year: “These arrangements have now been discontinued and it is clear that they have no intention of bringing it back.” The company was liquidated five years ago.
It is not clear why the exemption was rescinded or what measures keep the proprietary investments that replaced it secret.
