Reports that the British billionaire David Reuben fled the United Kingdom for Monaco this summer over fears of tax rises have been contradicted by the tax research organisation TaxWatch, which produced official documents showing he has been resident in the principality for more than a decade.
The Sunday Times reported on its front page on 4 October that Reuben, 88, had left his home in Holland Park, west London, and moved to Monaco over the summer, joining his younger brother Simon, who has lived in the principality for around 40 years. The brothers have a combined fortune estimated at almost £28 billion, with property holdings including some of London's best-known landmarks, while David Reuben is also a shareholder in Newcastle United Football Club.
The move was presented as the latest in a wave of departures by wealthy Britons following changes to the UK's tax system, including the abolition of the non-domiciled tax regime in April 2025. Most major UK news outlets, along with many international ones, quickly replicated the story as another example of Britain's wealthiest residents fleeing for the safe haven of the principality.
But on 7 October, TaxWatch published an investigation by its director Mike Lewis, headlined How many times can a British billionaire move to Monaco?, setting out official documents in which David Reuben had declared himself a Monaco resident years earlier. The evidence included paperwork filed with the UK companies registry in July 2019, when Reuben became a director of the Reuben Foundation and the documents stated he was usually resident in Monaco. Furthermore, in 2024 Reuben provided a signed declaration to a Los Angeles court in which he stated that he resided in Monaco and had done so for approximately ten years. A spokesperson for the Reuben family confirmed to The Guardian that he had been a tax resident in Monaco for several years.
Monaco is a popular destination for high-net-worth individuals because it does not impose income tax, capital gains tax or inheritance tax, making it an attractive alternative to the UK tax regime. The TaxWatch findings challenged the narrative of a sudden exodus of the super-rich driven by current fiscal policy, suggesting instead that at least one of its most-cited examples had left long before the present government took office.
The episode became a case study in how quickly an unverified narrative can spread through the media. Commentators noted that the original story fitted neatly into an ongoing political argument about wealth taxes and the Laffer-curve risks of driving millionaires abroad, which may explain why so many outlets repeated it without checking the underlying records. TaxWatch said its investigation showed the importance of verifying residency claims against official documents rather than relying on unsourced assertions.
For the Reuben brothers, among the most secretive of Britain's billionaire class, the unwanted publicity was a rare moment in the spotlight. Their property empire spans office blocks, shopping centres and luxury developments across London and beyond, and their wealth has continued to grow even as the British economy has stagnated. Whether other reported tax-flight departures will survive similar scrutiny remains to be seen.