Rishi Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murty, are in the spotlight this week. It's emerged that Murty, who is the daughter of one of the richest men in India and herself as a personal fortune worth hundreds of millions of pounds, has avoided paying UK tax on her foreign incomes.
She's been able to do that thanks to a centuries-old loophole called non-domicile status. This allowed her to apply for her foreign income to be exempted from UK tax.
While this is legal and she is by no means the only wealthy person to use the loophole to avoid paying millions in tax, it has been widely regarded as being immoral. In addition, there is a potential conflict of interest, given Sunak is the man in charge of the tax system, yet his direct family are benefiting from this loophole.
Read more: What is a non-dom and why is Rishi Sunak's wife one?
But who is Akshata Murty, and how did she assemble her wealth? How much is she even worth?
Akshata Murty biography
Age and early life
Akshata Murty is 42 years old. She was born in April 1980 in Hubli, India.
Just two months later, Murty's parents moved to Mumbai. However, they struggled to balance raising their child with progressing their careers, so they soon sent Murty back to Hubli to live with her grandparents.
After going to school in India, Murty would go on to study economics and French at the private Claremont McKenna College in California, then design and merchandising at the Fashion Institute of Design in LA. She then worked for Deloitte and Unilever before returning to education, studying at Stanford, where she met Sunak in 2005.
The pair married in Bangalore in 2009.
Who are Akshata Murty's parents?
Murty is the daughter of Sudha Murty and NR Narayana Murthy.
Sudha Murty, Akshata's mother, was a computer scientist who became the first female engineer to work for India's then-largest car maker, part of the Tata conglomerate. She is now a philanthropist.
NR Narayana Murthy, Akshata's father, founded the IT and consultancy company Infosys, becoming a billionaire and one of the richest men in India as the company grew. He no longer runs the company, but Akshata retains a stake.
Murty now has two children of her own.
Net worth
Murty retains a 0.91 per cent stake in her father's old company, Infosys, believed to be worth nearly hundreds of millions of pounds. The company brings in around $13 billion per year.
She also owns her own fashion brand, Akshata Designs, and is the director of a venture capital business named Catamaran Ventures UK. She owns shares in another six UK companies.
Murty and Sunak together own four homes, including a £7m property in Kensington, another elsewhere in London, a £1.5m mansion in Sunak's north Yorkshire constituency of Richmond, and a holiday home in Santa Monica, California worth around £5.5m.
Her total net worth is estimated at £500m.
