(foxnews) – As many Americans and businesses struggled during the pandemic, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci and his wife experienced a $5 million net worth increase.
The Faucis saw their net worth expand from $7.5 million in 2019 to $12.6 million at the end of 2021, watchdog group OpenTheBooks discovered and shared with Fox News Digital. The increase came from the likes of investment gains, awards, compensation and royalties.
“While Dr. Fauci has been a government bureaucrat for more than 55 years, his household net worth skyrocketed during the pandemic,” OpenTheBooks CEO Adam Andrzejewski told Fox News Digital. “Fauci’s soaring net worth was based on career-end salary spiking, lucrative cash prizes awarded by non-profit organizations around the world and an ever-larger investment portfolio.”
“Despite becoming a figure of controversy, the system has rewarded Dr. Fauci handsomely,” Andrzejewski said. “For example, he is the top-paid federal employee, his first-year golden parachute retirement pension is the largest in federal history, and he’s accepting $1 million prizes from foreign non-profits.”
According to OpenTheBooks, which obtained Fauci’s financial disclosure forms to calculate the figures, the Faucis saw their investment gains top $900,000 in 2021, while their portfolios experienced a nearly $800,000 increase in 2020.
The funds were in a combination of trust, retirement and college education accounts, and Fauci invested in mutual funds with no reported holdings of individual stocks. At the end of last year, Fauci’s account totaled $10.2 million, as his wife, Christine Grady, added $2.4 million in investments, the analysis shows.
Fauci also pocketed lucrative awards from nonprofits, including $1 million in 2021 from the Dan David Foundation for “speaking truth to power” and “defending science” during the Trump administration. He held on to $910,400 of the award, while roughly 10% went to scholarship winners, OpenTheBooks found. He also received $12,500 awards from the Eliot Richardson Prize in Public Service and the Abelson Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Additionally, Fauci’s compensation increased by more than $20,000 between 2020 and 2021, as he remained the highest paid federal employee, including taking home more than President Biden. Fauci received $456,028 in compensation in 2021, an uptick from the $434,312 he earned in 2020.
Meanwhile, Fauci’s wife, the National Institutes of Health’s chief bioethicist, was paid $238,970 in 2021, a slight increase from the prior year. She has earned $1.6 million in compensation from her position since 2015.
The disclosures further showed that Fauci, who edits the medical book “Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine”and sits on the publisher’s board, received $100,000 for the editor duties in 2021.
“Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com relentlessly pursued transparency into the Fauci Family Finances — and those of the NIH itself –— because the stakes are so high,” Andrzejewski said.
“We filed four federal lawsuits to follow the money, and documents are starting to be produced,” Andrzejewski added. “Public health guidance during the pandemic has drastically impacted the lives of every citizen, and Dr. Fauci has been its most visible face. It’s critical to know whether any decision-making is tied up in the financial interests of public leaders, whether they’ve made any ethics disclosures to the government, and how they invested.”
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases did not respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment on the analysis.
Fauci, who plans to retire in December, saw his household’s net worth increase as Americans struggled and small businesses faltered during the pandemic.
Last week, Fauci admitted that he knew the “draconian” pandemic measures would lead to “collateral negative consequences” for the economy and schoolchildren.
While justifying the measures, he said that “sometimes when you do draconian things, it has collateral negative consequences, just like when you shut things down, even temporarily, it does have deleterious consequences on the economy, on the schoolchildren. You know that.”
Fauci confirmed he risked these harms, adding, “But you have to make a balance when you’re dealing with — we know the only way to stop something cold in its track is to try and shut things down.”
“If you shut things down just for the sake of it, that’s bad,” he said, adding, “But if you do it with the purpose of being able to regroup so that you can then open up in a more safe way, that’s the best way to do it.”
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