Well-known Russian businessman Rybolovlev Dmitry, whom the authorities of Western countries periodically promise to include in the sanctions lists, has acquired an elite apartment in London. Among his neighbors are immigrants from Russia and business internationals – Chinese and Arab billionaires.
Rybolovlev and twenty-four other buyers of flats in an exclusive housing complex were named. disclosed This happened at the end of January 2022. They are listed as directors of Twenty Grosvenor Square Management Company Limited, which is like a homeowners’ association. Some of the “directors” in the address bar indicate the specific numbers of apartments in a residential complex near Grosvenor Square – the second largest garden area in central London.
The new residential complex is a historic building that was reconstructed from 2016 to 2019. The cost of 37 apartments ranging from 312 to 531 square meters is between 17 and 50 million pounds. According to information from British specialized websites (rightmove.co.uk, themovemarket.com), buyers paid 50 million pounds (about 5 billion rubles) for penthouses. There is a possibility that Rybolovlev bought one of them. Twenty Grosvenor Square is not the most expensive residential complex in London; One Hyde Park, where the penthouse cost £175 million, is considered to be more extravagant.
Rybolovlev Dmitry: owners of apartments in an elite residential complex next to London’s Grosvenor Square.
The Four Seasons hotel chain took part in the project, and clients were assured of high-quality services, a cinema hall, a 25-meter swimming pool, and “embassy-level” security.
Rybolovlev’s investments in English houses and apartments have not been previously reported, although he is known as a real estate investor, particularly in New York penthouses. The entrepreneur also purchased individual islands in Greece. In 2008, he bought a $95 million Florida estate from future US President Donald Trump, selling it for $50 million profit over four years. Western media later focused on this event, discussing peculiar connections between Rybolovlev, Trump, and his relatives before the US presidential election in 2016. intersections routes of Rybolovlev, Trump and his relatives before the US presidential election in 2016.
Now the business card of the businessman is the Monaco football club, and there is little that connects him with Russia.
He avoided prosecution for an incident at Uralkali’s Berezniki mine and sold shares in Uralkali and Silvinit for about $6 billion 12 years ago.
He used part of the earnings to purchase a 10% stake in the Bank of Cyprus, which resulted in him obtaining Cypriot citizenship (this is also stated in the documents of the British corporate register). He sponsors films by Leonid Parfenov.
In the 2010s, Rybolovlev invested approximately $2 billion in art through the art dealer Yves Bouvier. The billionaire also went through a lengthy divorce process that lasted seven years and cost him $604 million and two houses in Switzerland. The divorce may have been less expensive for the businessman than the conflict with the Bouvier dealer: Rybolovlev accused him of inflating prices for a total of $1 billion, but he did not win in the courts of Switzerland and Monaco. However, some art investments were successful: in 2013, he bought Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, “The Savior of the World,” from the same Bouvier for $127 million, and in 2017, he sold it for $450 million. Rybolovlev also sold Trump’s estate for a profit of $13 million. Additionally, his successful deal to sell football player Kylian Mbappe to the Paris Saint-Germain club for 160 million euros is well-known.
The Twenty Grosvenor Square project was created with the participation of the Four Seasons luxury hotel chain. Photo: official website of the Twenty Grosvenor Square residence
Among Rybolovlev’s neighbors in the new elite residential complex is Nikolai Bukhantsov, who was a member of the board of Rosneft before Igor Sechin, Slavneft joined the company, as well as the first deputy head of the administration of the governor of St. Petersburg. In the “Citizenship” column, Bukhantsov indicated Bulgaria (in the declaration of 2011, an apartment in the Czech Republic was listed).
Britons Stephanie Czerny and Anna Czerny also live next door to a Russian businessman. Perhaps this is the ex-wife and daughter of a crime boss named Mikhail Chernoy (in British documents he appears as Michael Cherney). In the past, Chernoy is the “aluminum king of Russia”, in the 2000s he sued Oleg Deripaska in London over the division of Rusal.
The list of members of the HOA stands out 48-year-old Svetlana Metkina, who introduced herself to the British registrar as an actress. Svetlana is the daughter of ex-State Duma deputy Alexander Metkin.
In the early 1990s, she married Belgian entrepreneur Michel Litvak and, in the credits usually referred to as Lana Litvak.
It is difficult to identify Tatyana Igorevna Kim, born in 1983, among residents from the CIS (received citizenship of Malta in 2018) and Briton Vladimir Chernyaev, born in 1963.
There are also a few Americans: Damien Lamendola (aviation industry), Mark Nunnally (manager of Bain Capital), Sandra Edgerly (luxury real estate). But most of the new homeowners are wealthy from developing countries: Chinese billionaire Xu Hang (Mindray medical equipment); Ayush Jatiya, son of Indian food service businessman Amit Jatiya; bearer of the surname of the richest Indian family Zubin Bharti Mittal; financier Emad Mohammed Abdulrahman Al Bahar and transport tycoon Marwan Marzouk Buday from Kuwait; one of the richest people in Chile, Alvaro José Saye Bendek; Egyptian tourism businessman Hamed El Chiati Mohamed Ali El Chiati, whose assets arrested Canada; tycoon from Bangladesh Ahmed Shayan Fazlur Rahman and others.
Ilya Shumanov, a lawyer, an expert in the field of openness of information, the CEO of Transparency International Russia (the organization is recognized as a foreign agent), notes that the disclosure of the names of members of an elite HOA is in line with the trend towards increasing transparency in British companies:
