Boris said:
I would take this recent information with a grain of salt.
The King has reportedly set up very nice trust funds for each of his children. Most of the Bernadotte jewelry is in trust funds, which effectively means that The King still owns them but doesn't have to pay income/property tax.
The Queen has next to no personal fortune - again, saving taxes.
Both the Solliden and Stenhammar castles are owned by the King privately.
I just wonder if all of this, including artwork, paintings, furniture etc. is really part of the 'petty' sum of the supposed 22 million Euro (which isn't chicken feed either).
If I remember correctly, I read an article a few years go which pointed out that the King is a very shrewd investor in stocks... so I am really sceptical if this assessment of his personal fortune is correct.
The fortune estimates that the media publishes is only what they can find in public tax reports, meaning personal income and assessed private fortune. This means merely the assets that are in the form of stocks and bonds etc, nothing more. So yes Boris, this is far from the whole picture, as I also tried to explain below.
Now the King doesn't personally own Stenhammar, it's in his right of use via a testament that stipulates that a Swedish heir prince must use it and the King took it over after Prince Vilhelm. I would personally say that the King is a very rich man if one looks at the whole picture, which means everything he owns but which we really don't know much about (and no one could really estimate a value). And yes, the royal children all have their private funds set up when they were young so he gave some of his investment money to them (Prince Carl Philip also owns the villa that Princess Lilian resides in, which he inherited after Prince Bertil, plus a home in Värmland, his duchy).
Since everyone seems so fascinated by wealth and money, here are some things which are
not counted in the King's wealth estimations circulated in the media:
* Collections of arts, furniture, silver, porcelain, jewellery inherited from previous royals from Sweden and other countries and also personal purchases (which one can't really put an estimate on, and I guess no one but the King and perhaps some close staff knows how much and what he owns)
* Private estates (Solliden Palace, Villa Mirage, holiday cottages in Storlien and Tärnaby)
* Real estate (buildings) plus the holding companies that controlls the business parts
* An exclusive car collection, boats
Marengo said:
So with 10 million everything is covered? That is a rather cheap deal for the Swedes!
Well the monarchies in Sweden, Denmark and Norway all receive comparable apanages from their states, so if you think it's cheap then all of the Scandinavian monarchies are cheap
I think that our King and his family should get more money. Especially the requests for higher appropriations to increase security (comparable to the ones of Parliament and Government) at the Royal Palaces and higher appropriations for maintenance of the palaces (all of ours cultural heritage) should be passed by Government and Parliament. To me those are two important things, but there is also a limit somewhere.