THIS is the inside story of Britain’s richest family and their major internal feud.
The Hinduja family have an estimated net worth of £28.4 billion and run a business empire that employs 150,000 people.
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The Hinduja patriarch, Srichand, who died earlier this week, topped the Sunday Times Rich List alongside his brother Gopichand for a fourth time in 2022.
Srichand was chairman of the family business group, which owns a variety of companies across his native India, including in banking, commercial vehicle sales and chemicals.
In the UK, where the family largely reside, they own several high-value properties, including a vast 18th Century home near Buckingham Palace and the historic Old War Office building in Whitehall.
They also acquired parts of the defunct British motoring giant British Leyland in 1987.
Srichand and his brothers Gopichand, Prakash and Ashok built the company up after it was established by their late-father Parmanand.
Paramanand started out trading spices, carpets and tea in 1914 in an area of British India in what is now Pakistan.
Their first international branch was opened in Iran in 1919, before the company was forced to relocate to London by the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
Srichand and Gopichand co-chaired the group from London, while Prakash manages the company’s operations in Switzerland and Ashok is responsible for the Indian branch.
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The family made mostly made their money in exports of oil and telecommunications equipment as well as their business dubbing Hindi films into Persian in Iran.
In Switzerland, Pakash owns a £20 million superyacht, named Param Jamuna IV after his parents, and a Dassault Falcon 2000 private jet, manufactured by the Hinduja-owned Ashok Leyland.
However, in the years before Srichand’s death, he was locked in a contentious dispute with his relatives.
The family rift, over ownership of a Swiss bank, led to his medical needs becoming “marginalised”, according to The Guardian.
The brothers took the case to the High Court to contest Srichand’s claim to sole ownership of Hinduja Bank.
The case centred around a letter in which, according to the other three brothers, Srichand said that any assets belonging to one of them belonged to all of them.
However, the brothers reportedly agreed terms to end the case last year as Srichand’s health declined.
Meanwhile, the family has been embroiled in several widely reported controversies.
Last year, they were accused of “playing Scrooge” after a company they own a majority share in refused to offer its workers an inflation-matching pay rise.
They were also linked to the so-called ‘Hinduja Affair’ in 2001 that saw the resignations of then-Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson and then-Europe Minister Keith Vaz.
The pair were both cleared of improper conduct in relation to calls made to Home Office ministers regarding Srichand’s application for British citizenship.
In 1992, Srichand’s 22-year-old son Dharam died after setting himself on fire in what a coroner described as a “suicide pact” with an Anglo-Indian woman he had secretly married, according to The Independent.
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