
Britain's migrant hotel ‘king' becomes BILLIONAIRE after fortune soared by £265m, as Sunday Times Rich List released
Graham King has amassed a £1.015 billion from his asylum empire it has been revealed.
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Essex tycoon Graham King, 58, has amassed a £1.015 billion from his asylum empire
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Migrant hotel tycoon Graham King is a keen amateur racing driver.
Credit: Tim Stewart
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King's business started off when he purchased a caravan site
Credit: Tim Stewart
The tycoon's wealth skyrocketed this year with a massive £265m increase pushing him over the line to become a billionaire.
He is now among The Sunday Times Rich List's newest billionaires after only making it onto the list last year.
King, 58, is an Essex asylum
The company is paid by the home office to provide accommodation for asylum seekers.
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It has a massive £1.7 billion turnover with King's firm raking in almost £4.8 million a day.
King now uses his wealth to fund a lavish lifestyle for him and his girlfriend and pursues his passion of amateur racing.
His fortune reached record highs alongside record high numbers of people claiming asylum in the UK.
The number of people claiming asylum climbed from 91,811 in 2023 to 108,138 last year, a record high.
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The news comes just after PM Kier Starmer announced a crack down on immigration.
King once owned a
Clearsprings recent contracts include one with the home office that runs until September 2029.
Fury as hotel firm housing asylum seekers in 'all-inclusive resort' paid £700m a year of YOUR money
The most recent contract is estimated to be worth a massive £7.3 billion.
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The huge success of King's company has seen his
He is now officially a billionaire according to The Sunday Times Rich List.
Graham King first made it onto rich list last year, owning 99% of Clearsprings' shares.
His wealth has exploded since, catapulting him from the 221st spot on the list to the 154th.
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Home Office contracts to house asylum seekers have been awarded mostly to three companies.
King's Clearsprings Ready Homes, Mears Group and Serco.
Clearsprings provides accommodation mostly in old military barracks, flats and hotels.
King, now officially a
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He has made the news for the condition of his properties before with inspectors finding "failures of leadership and planning" in his operations.
Asylum seekers were housed by King's company in "decrepit" and "run down" barracks in Kent and
King's already massive wealth rose 35% this year which and now sits at £1.015 billion.
For the fourth year in a row, Goji Hinduja and family have topped the Sunday Times Rich list, with the investors sharing a net worth of £35.304 billion.
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They suffered a fall of £1.892 billion from last year's survey.
The minimum entry level for the list flatlines at £350 million.
This year's list marks the largest drop in billionaires in the guide's 37-year history, with just 156 making
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Other celebrities who made the list include Ellen Degeneres, Charlotte Tilbury, Ed Sheeran and Brewdog Founder James Watt.
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King and his girlfriend frequently holiday together
Credit: Tim Stewart
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Penally Camp in Wales.

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Irish Times
7 hours ago
- Irish Times
Where does Ireland really rank in the international rich list?
Influential international magazine the Economist produces a 'rich list' of countries each year – a league table of how income levels in different countries compare. This year Ireland was excluded, as the authors said its data was 'polluted by tax arbitrage'. This is, of course, correct. Gross domestic product (GDP) is the general measure of comparison used for such studies, and Ireland's data is completely messed up by the tax planning activities of the multinationals, which generally use intellectual property assets to declare as much profit as they can here. This is – generally - legal, but it hugely inflates Irish GDP and makes us look richer than we are. So where do we actually rank in terms of incomes compared to other countries? 1. The GDP dilemma The Economist – along with most other bodies including EU agency Eurostat, the IMF and private forecasters – take GDP as the basis for their calculation and divide it by the population to get a measure of income per head. A calculation is then generally made to adjust for different price levels in various countries. These GDP per capita figures – published by Eurostat – show Ireland in second place to Luxembourg in the EU and at about third place in the world, with Singapore also ahead. (Small territories such as Macau and Monaco also feature high up on some lists.) In cash terms, EU GDP per capita was estimated at €33,550 in 2024, while Irish GDP per capita was put at €88,600. This is before adjustment for different price levels, used in the international comparisons. READ MORE [ Ireland not a 'truly rich' country, according to The Economist Opens in new window ] This is plainly not a reflection of the actual income levels here compared to other countries. In fact, with GDP per capita here more than twice the EU average, even after adjusting for different price levels, the figures here are off the charts and best ignored. 2. Making the adjustment So how can we do better? 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One is that Ireland's GDP data has become progressively more detached from reality as of the middle of the last decade. The first real indication of this was the 'Leprechaun economics' saga of 2015, when Irish GDP was adjusted upwards by more than 26 per cent, catching the attention of US economist Paul Krugman. There was another surge upwards in 2022. Ireland's 'real' economy has grown for sure, but the GDP figures have overstated this consistently. And so the actual level of GDP has got further and further detached from reality. It is now more than 40 per cent higher than modified GNI, according to the latest CSO estimates. This messes up international comparisons, affects our contributions to the EU budget and brings some unwelcome international attention here. Second, when we make adjustments, Ireland moves closer to reality, but exactly where we stand remains open to some debate. In common-sense terms, Ireland does not feel better-off than some of the higher-ranking EU countries such as Germany, Austria and Sweden. Perhaps we are in line with or just behind these countries, but ahead of Southern Europe? If we took a midpoint between the modified GNI per head and the AIC, that is where we would be left. Third, on any criteria, Ireland has made progress over the longer term and has made some relative gains since 2019. This is not to gainsay the problems, of course. The average figures make no allowance, for example, for intergenerational inequality or the problems of younger people getting on to the housing ladder. But on any of the averages measure Ireland's relative position has improved over the last five years. And finally, income is only one measure of national wellbeing. There are a lot of other factors which affect standards of living. One is wealth – the amount of property, investments and cash in the bank held by households. Others are the efficiency with which services are delivered to the public, the environment in which they live and even the weather. There are hosts of other indices which attempt to measure some of these factors – but while national income is hard to compare across countries, doing the same with wellbeing is next to impossible.


Irish Examiner
a day ago
- Irish Examiner
Cormac O'Keeffe: Tension mounts in Ireland's real-life spy drama
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Irish Examiner
2 days ago
- Irish Examiner
Gardaí exonerate politician in 'active criminal probe' into alleged Russian agent
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