Rich Russian buys £50m flat in central London near Arab neighbors
Well-known Russian businessman Dmitry Rybolovlev, whom Western countries sometimes threaten with sanctions, has purchased a fancy London apartment, reported Octagon. His neighbors include Russians, Chinese and Arab billionaires. The names of Rybolovlev and two dozen other buyers of apartments in a prestigious residential complex were made public at the end of January 2022.
They are listed as directors of Twenty Grosvenor Square Management Company Limited (a type of 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, its reconstruction took place in 2016–2019. The cost of 37 apartments (ranging from 312-531 square meters) ranges from 17 to 50 million pounds. According to information on British specialized portals (rightmove.co.uk, themovemarket.com), buyers paid 50 million pounds (about 5 billion rubles) for penthouses. It is possible 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 one.
Dmitry Rybolovlev's name is on the list of apartment owners in a luxurious residential complex near London’s Grosvenor Square.
The Four Seasons hotel chain participated in the project, and clients were assured of getting a cinema hall, a 25-meter swimming pool, as well as high-level security.
Rybolovlev’s investments in English houses and apartments have not been previously disclosed, although he is known as a real estate investor, particularly in New York penthouses. The entrepreneur also bought individual islands in Greece. In 2008, he purchased a $95 million Florida estate from future US President Donald Trump, garnering him $50 million over four years. Western media later relied on this fact, discussing the unusual connections between Rybolovlev, Trump and his relatives prior to the US presidential election in 2016.
Now the businessman's main focus is the Monaco football club, and there is little that links him to Russia.
He avoided prosecution for an accident at Uralkali’s Berezniki mine and sold shares in Uralkali and Silvinit for about $6 billion 12 years ago.
The businessman used some of the proceeds to acquire a 10% stake in the Bank of Cyprus, leading to him obtaining Cypriot citizenship (it is also stated in the documents of the British corporate register). He sponsors films by Leonid Parfenov.
In the 2010s, Rybolovlev invested about $2 billion in art through the art dealer Yves Bouvier. The billionaire also went through a lengthy divorce process, lasting seven years and costing him $604 million and two houses in Switzerland. The divorce might have been less costly than the conflict with the Bouvier dealer: Rybolovlev accused him of inflating prices by a total of $1 billion, but he did not succeed in Swiss and Monaco courts. However, some art investments were successful: in 2013, he bought Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Savior of the World” from Bouvier for $127 million, and in 2017, he sold it for $450 million. Rybolovlev also made a $13 million profit selling Trump’s estate. Additionally, he is known for his successful deal for the sale of football player Kylian Mbappe to the Paris Saint-Germain club for 160 million euros.
The Twenty Grosvenor Square project was created with the participation of the Four Seasons luxury hotel chain.
Photo: Twenty Grosvenor Square official website
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 (he appears in British documents 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.
48-year-old Svetlana Metkina, who introduced herself to the British registrar as an actress, stands out in the list of members of the HOA. Svetlana is the daughter of ex-State Duma deputy Alexander Metkin.
In the early 1990s, she married Belgian entrepreneur Michel Litvak and was commonly referred to in the credits as Lana Litvak.
It is difficult to recognize Tatyana Igorevna Kim, born in 1983 (obtained citizenship of Malta in 2018) and Briton Vladimir Chernyaev, born in 1963, among residents from the CIS.
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 were seized by 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:
