SULTAN OF BLING
Pink Rolls Royce, ‘Hitler’s car’ & jet fleet…lux life of half-Brit Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar now crowned King of Malaysia
And any evil group aiming to undermine the monarchy would face the wrath of the Sultan's very own private army
MALAYSIA's new monarch truly lives the life fit for a king with more than 300 ultra-lux cars and his very own private jet fleet.
Billionaire Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar, 65, flaunts an estate estimated to be worth some £4.5billion, but his real wealth is thought to be far greater.
7
7
7
The new King's private jet fleet includes a gold-and-blue Boeing 737, with the family having their won private army.
That is only matched by his collection of about 300 luxury vehicles, which includes a pink Rolls Royce and a car gifted to his predecessors by none other than Adolf Hitler.
The unique 1936 Mercedes 540 with gull-wing doors was the only one of its kind ever built.
It was gifted to the current Sultan's great-great-grandfather by Adolf Hitler just three years before the start of the Second World War.
The German dictator was a close personal friend of the then-monarch and apparently tipped him off to the fact that the car would be available.
Given the unbelievable history of the car, if the King ever decided to sell it, it would likely fetch millions of pounds.
The luxurious Istana Bukit Serene, his official palace, also reflects his family's fortune.
The Sultan - a half-Brit - is one of the richest men in the country thanks to his business empire that ranges from real estate to telecoms and power plants.
Most read in The Sun
He also has huge holdings in international property and stakes in a variety of other companies.
While the estimated family fortune is pegged at $5.7 billion (£4.5 billion) by Bloomberg, the true extent of Sultan Ibrahim's wealth is believed to be much beyond that.
His holdings include a 24% stake in U Mobile, one of Malaysia's major cell service providers, with additional investments in private and public companies summing up to $588million (£465million).
He also owns $4 billion in land in Singapore, including Tyersall Park, a large tract next to the Botanic Gardens.
The Sultan's investment portfolio is worth $1.1 billion (£869million), due to significant cash flow from share and real estate purchases.
He was sworn in as Malaysia's new king Wednesday under a unique rotating monarchy system, which sees the rulers of nine Malaysian states take turns as monarch for five-year terms.
On Wednesday, Ibrahim, the king of Johor state, took his oath of office at the royal palace, in front of other royal families, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, and cabinet members.
A coronation ceremony will be held later.
Known as the Yang Di-Pertuan Agong, or He Who is Made Lord, the king has an essentially ceremonial role, with the prime minister and Parliament exercising administrative power.
But the king is the formal leader of the government and armed forces, and he is widely considered as the defender of Islam and Malay tradition.
All laws, Cabinet appointments and the dissolution of Parliament for general elections require his assent.
The king also has the power to proclaim an emergency and pardon criminals.
But in an interview with Singapore’s The Straits Times in December, the billionaire Sultan said he was not keen on becoming a “puppet king”.
“There’re 222 of you [lawmakers] in parliament. There’re over 30 million [population] outside. I’m not with you, I’m with them,” he was quoted as saying in the broadsheet.
“I will support the government, but if I think they are doing something improper, I will tell them.”
Sultan Ibrahim is regarded as a religious moderate. In 2017, he ordered the proprietor of a laundromat to apologise for suspected discrimination against non-Muslim customers.
Read More on The US Sun
Married with six children, he has previously undertaken annual travels across Johor on a Harley-Davidson motorbike to provide charity to the impoverished.
Criticism perceived to encourage contempt for the king may result in prison time.
A Half-Brit King
The new king of Malaysia has historical links with the English seaside resort town of Torquay - making him therefore a half-Brit.
Torquay, a Victorian coastal resort, was frequently visited by British and European monarchy at its peak popularity.
The Russian royal family, the Romanovs, established a private home on a nearby headland and entertained nobles from all over the continent in their seaside Devon getaway, which they also rented out to visiting dukes and duchesses.
Torquay has since gone out of favour with the wealthy and famous, but its ties to monarchy have been rekindled by the coronation of the half-British billionaire as Malaysia's king.
The British mother of Sultan Ibrahim first met her Malaysian royal husband at a dinner in Torquay in 1955 while he was studying local government.
Josephine Trevorrow, the teen daughter of a Cornish merchant, was living in the English Riviera resort as an art student when she met Mahmud Iskandar, a Malaysian prince, and they married ten months later, much to his orthodox countrymen's dismay.
They divorced in 1962 after six years of marriage and four children, Ibrahim being the third. Josephine remarried four years later but did not have any more children.
She died in London in 2018, aged 82, and her body was brought to Malaysia by her son to be given a royal burial.
7
7
7
7