The UK government's Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, in light of the controversy around his wife Akshata Murthy's non-domicile status, has referred himself to Prime Minister Boris Johnson's ethics watchdog, the BBC reported on Monday, 11 April.
The chancellor wants Lord Geidt – the advisor to the prime minister on ministers' interests – to check whether he has broken any laws or not.
The Labour Party has claimed that the British public deserves to know if Sunak ever benefitted from tax havens.
Akshata Murthy, on the other hand, announced last week she would start paying taxes to the British government on her foreign earnings.
It was recently revealed that Murthy pays £30,000 a year to maintain her non-dom status, which allows her to avoid paying up to £20 million in tax to the British government.
She owns £700m in shares of the Indian IT giant Infosys (0.93 percent), founder by her father Narayana Murthy.
The revelation stirred up a controversy, given that the chancellor recently raised the tax burden for millions of British people.
On Sunak's demand, a Whitehall inquiry has been initiated to investigate who leaked the details of Akshata Murthy's tax status to the media.
The Sunday Times newspaper reported on 9 April that Sunak considered resigning from the UK government over Murthy's non-dom status.
"He was considering whether he could withstand his family taking this any more," the newspaper quoted an anonymous source as saying.
You can read in detail here about what a non-domiciled status means, and why Murthy's non-dom status can ruin Sunak's political fortunes.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)