They reveal that Queen Elizabeth II pressured the government to change a law that allowed it to hide part of its fortune

An investigation by The Guardian newspaper has revealed in recent hours that Queen Elizabeth II lobbied the British government in the 1970s to change a law that allowed him to hide part of his private property.

Journalists David Pegg and Rob Evans accessed the National Archives and discovered that a lawyer for the monarch had pressured ministers to change a bill, which came into effect in 1976, to prevent their actions in different companies are made public.

In this way, Isabel II would have hidden private investments and investments until 2011, at least.

This maneuver was made possible by a parliamentary procedure called “consent of the queen” which establishes that ministers must indicate whether or not the law affects the private interests of the Crown and seek their consent to debate it.

According to the survey, since Elizabeth II began her reign used this mechanism to revise 1,062 laws, and there is evidence to suggest that in several cases he “pressured” the government to change them.

“ The large number of laws under actual investigation cover issues ranging from justice, social security, pensions, race relations and food policy even obscure rules on parking fees for cars and hovercraft, ”the Guardian article read.

“They included invoices that affected the Queen’s personal property, such as her private estates at Balmoral and Sandringham, and potentially anything that was considered to affect him personally, ”he says.

The documents also show that on other occasions, the monarch’s advisers demanded exclusions from proposed road safety and land policy laws that appeared to affect their properties, and lobbied that government policy on historical sites changes, ”he adds.

In consultation with investigators, representatives of the Queen they refused to say how many times he asked for changes to law since his accession to the throne in 1952.

The Royals describe the consent process as “a long-standing convention in which Parliament asks the Queen for consent … to debate bills that would affect the prerogative or interests of the Crown.”

The inquiry contends that “some of the bills considered by the Queen before being approved by Parliament relate to wealth or taxes“.

In 2014, for example, the Queen and the Heir to the Throne reviewed the Trustee Powers and Inheritance Bill. Two years earlier, she had considered the draft law on trusts (capital and income). Trusts are legal arrangements that wealthy families often use to protect their assets from public and tax audits. “

“She has also looked at bills that cover entire areas of government policy making. The Queen has reviewed at least 11 bills governing railways, sometimes relating to land in royal estates.”

“In 2013, the Queen gave her consent to the parliamentary bill to build line 2 of the high-speed train between London and Birmingham. Transport ministers had informed the palace that the bill affected the “interests of the Crown”, as the to acquire 21 parcels of crown property during construction of the line “.

Hide your fortune

Journalists Pegg and Evans explain how Elizabeth II pressured the government of Edward Heath in 1973 to hide his fortune from the public.

The initiative aimed to prevent investors from secretly accumulating large stakes in publicly traded companies by acquiring their shares through shell companies. In this context, the rule required that the identity of potential buyers should always be disclosed.

According to newspapers, the Queen feared that this transparency law would allow Britons to know everything about their finances. To avoid this, he sent one of his lawyers to pressure the government to make changes.

Matthew Farrer, at the time a partner at the law firm Farrer & Co, proposed that this law not affect the monarch arguing that “any disclosure of beneficial ownership of shares by the Crown, even if limited to directors of the company, is potentially embarrassing, because of the risk of leakage ”.

The government complied with his request and included a clause that allowed some companies not to have to declare the identity of shareholders and thus avoid knowing where the queen’s fortune came from.

The bill was enacted by the Labor government of Harold Wilson in 1976.

“It is believed the exemption helped hide the Queen’s private fortune until at least 2011,” The Guardian noted, explaining that the exemption was granted almost immediately to a company called the Bank of England Nominees Limited operated by high level people from the Bank of England.

The newspaper also said the company closed four years ago without publicly renouncing its activities.