Akshata murty: why rishi sunak’s wife’s vast fortune is so controversial

This article contains affiliate links. We may earn a small commission on items purchased through this article, but that does not affect our editorial judgement. Rishi Sunak has been wrapped

on the knuckles by the House of Commons standards watchdog for failing to properly declare his wife’s shareholding in Koru Kids The Prime Minister and his wife Akshata Murty have a family

fortune that ranks on the Sunday Times Rich List. Their net worth includes a mansion in Sunak’s North Yorkshire constituency (which was recently the site of a protest by Greenpeace) and a

holiday home in California. But the biggest asset they have is Ms Murty’s lucrative stake in her billionaire father’s gigantic Indian software firm Infosys. So, who exactly is Akshata Murty

- and how has she come to be embroiled in so many rows about her wealth? WHO IS RISHI SUNAK’S WIFE? Akshata Murty, 43, is a fashion designer and an heiress to a vast fortune. Born near

Bangalore, India in 1980, Ms Murty’s parents N.R. Narayana and Sudha founded software firm Infosys. Her father was the firm’s CEO from 1981 to 2002 and built it into a global empire worth

billions of dollars. He has become known as the ‘Bill Gates of India’. Ms Murty reportedly owns a 0.91% stake in the business, which has secured £50 million in UK public sector contracts

since 2015. She also owns fashion label Akshata Designs and UK-based venture capital company Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd, which is used to service and store her personal wealth. Sunak was a

shareholder in this company but transferred his shares over to his wife before he became an MP in 2015. The pair married in 2009 having met while studying at top US university Stanford,

California. He said Ms Murty held non dom status because she plans to move back to India one day to look after her parents. However, citizenship has nothing to do with tax status. At the

time, Boris Johnson’s office was accused of leaking the information - a claim it denied. READ MORE WHAT IS AKSHATA MURTY’S NET WORTH? However, the newspaper now estimates their wealth has

fallen by £201 million to £529 million in 2023 as a result of a fall in Infosys’s share price. Her family firm’s stock has lost around 20% of its value over the last 12 months due to

investor concerns about the state of the Indian tech industry. Rishi Sunak has not mentioned most of his wife’s assets in his Parliamentary register of financial interests (a log that’s

meant to ensure open democracy), including a significant shareholding in childcare firm Koru Kids, which benefitted from the Spring Budget 2023. The Prime Minister has since apologised for

this omission (more on this below). Sunak’s financial dealings are also controversial as he holds a blind trust - something he registered when he was appointed as Chief Secretary to the

Treasury in 2019. This type of investment vehicle is used by politicians and executives to avoid conflicts of interest in their line of work. It is meant to obscure the investments it makes

money from so its beneficiary doesn’t know the source of the income. But there is scepticism about whether they can truly work this way. RISHI SUNAK CHILDCARE ROW EXPLAINED In the wake of

the Spring Budget, the i reported that Rishi Sunak had a potential conflict of interest given his wife held shares in childcare provider Koru Kids. The company is one of six private agencies

being consulted on Jeremy Hunt’s plans to boost free childcare in a bid to get more people into the UK workforce. One of the key pillars of the policy was an attempt to recruit more

childminders, with those opting to take up a role at an agency receiving a golden hello that was double that offered to those doing so off their own bat (£1,200 compared to £600). It means

firms like Koru Kids could stand to benefit from the scheme. The PM was asked by Labour MP Catherine McKinnell at a select committee hearing in March whether he had any interests to declare

about the policy. He replied: “No, all my disclosures are declared in the normal way.” However, he had not publicly declared his wife was a shareholder in Koru Kids - something he

subsequently did when an updated register was published in April 2023. An inquiry by Parliament’s standards watchdog, the results of which were published on 24 August, found Sunak had failed

to declare the shareholding correctly. However, it said this rules breach was “inadvertent”. Parliamentary commissioner for standards Daniel Greenberg said the PM had apologised and will

face no further action. Although the PM will not have to apologise to the House of Commons, the ruling damages his attempts to distance himself from his predecessor Boris Johnson. AKSHATA

MURTY NON DOM TAX ROW EXPLAINED In April 2022, allegations emerged in The Independent that Akshata Murty was benefitting from non-domicile tax status - a way of saving money on her UK tax

bill. Non dom status is optional for UK residents whose permanent residence is in another country, and permits them to not pay UK tax on their foreign income. Given Infosys is based in

India, it means Ms Murty could have been saving millions of pounds in tax. The Guardian reported her lucrative stake in the firm is worth £11.5 million per year and that Ms Murty may have

saved up to £20 million on her UK tax bill by being a non dom. The UK tax rate on the kind of dividends she receives would be 39.35%, but India’s rate is much lower for non doms at 20% - or

even 10% if certain terms are met. While it is a legal practice, the morality of her decision to claim non dom status was questioned given she was living in Downing Street and married to a

serving Chancellor. At the time, Labour pointed out that Sunak was putting up taxes for “millions of working families” while his family was saving on their own tax bill. After intially

pushing back against the calls for her to drop her non dom status, Ms Murty eventually announced she would pay UK tax on all of her income. She said she made the decision as she did not want

her tax status to be a “distriction” for her husband. In a statement, she said she understood “the British sense of fairness” and had changed her mind “because I want to, not because the

rules require me to”. HOW WAS AKSHATA MURTY LINKED TO RUSSIA? Akshata Murty also courted controversy in March 2022 after Private Eye revealed her stake in Infosys and said that the firm had

not closed its Russian office in the wake of the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Many businesses opted to pull their operations out of Russia soon after the war began, but Infosys continued

to operate in Moscow for more than a month afterwards - a decision which appeared to contradict Rishi Sunak’s advice that firms should pull out of Russia. When challenged about Infosys on

Sky News, Sunak said: “I’m an elected politician and I’m here to talk to you about what I’m responsible for. My wife is not.” Infosys insisted in a statement given to the BBC that it did not

have “any active business relationships with local Russian enterprises”. It added that it had kept “a small team” there until 1 April. Continue Reading