According to company accounts filed this week

Russell Brand’s fortune has grown by more than £800,000 in a year, Chortle can reveal.

Newly-filed accounts at Companies House show that the assets in his firm, Pablo Diablo’s Legitimate Business Firm Ltd, grew from £4.07million to £4.88million in 12 months.

The paperwork covers the period up to December 2022, before a series of allegations of sexual assault were made against the comedian this summer.

Earlier this week, it was reported that the 48-year-old has been  questioned by police for the second time over the ‘non-recent’ claims.

Brand has previously denied the allegations, saying all his sexual encounters were consensual. 

The Met Police say a man believed to be Brand as been questioned over nine alleged offences – more than the original number reported by Times Newspapers and Channel 4’s Dispatches. 

At the time, Brand issued a video about what he considered an orchestrated campaign against him, saying: ‘Amid this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute.’

YouTube said they stopped Brand from earning money from his account following the investigation – which some estimates have said earned him up to £1million a year. He has 6.7million followers on the platform, a figure that has risen since allegations surfaced.

However, he has been allowed to maintain his income on ‘free speech’ platform Rumble, where he has more than 1millin followers, earning tens of thousands of pounds from each post, according to some experts. 

In September, Caroline Dineage, the chair of the Commons culture, media and sport committee, wrote to Rumble expressing ‘concern’ that Brand could profit from his videos.

The letter, believed to be sent to several social media platforms, asked: ‘We would be grateful if you could confirm whether Mr Brand is able to monetise his content, including his videos relating to the serious accusations against him. If so, we would like to know whether Rumble intends to join YouTube in suspending Mr Brand’s ability to earn money on the platform.’

Rumble called the intervention ‘extremely disturbing’ – and rejected moves to succumb to ‘a cancel culture mob’.

Its statement added: ‘We have devoted ourselves to the vital cause of defending a free internet — meaning an internet where no one arbitrarily dictates which ideas can or cannot be heard, or which citizens may or may not be entitled to a platform.

‘We regard it as deeply inappropriate and dangerous that the UK Parliament would attempt to control who is allowed to speak on our platform or earn a living from doing so. 

‘Singling out an individual and demanding his ban is even more disturbing given the absence of any connection between the allegations and his content on Rumble.’

Brand, whose personal fortune has been put at around £16million, is the sole director of Pablo Diablo’s Legitimate Business Firm Ltd. He signed off the 2022 accounts on Wednesday.

As part of the paperwork, the accounts state: ‘The director has no reason to believe that a material uncertainty exists that may cast significant doubt on the ability of the company to continue as a going concern.’

Brand lives in a £3.3million seven-bedroom Oxfordshire mansion in  Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, with his wife Laura and their two children. He bought the nearby Crown Inn pub for about £850,000 in December 2021.

The allegations date from when Brand was at the peak of his fame, between 2006 and 2013.

Published: 22 Dec 2023