Plebgate MP sells £1m ski flat to pay legal bill
PLEBGATE MP Andrew Mitchell has been forced to sell his £1million apartment in the exclusive ski resort of Val d’Isere to pay his crippling legal bills, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The Government’s former chief whip put the three-bedroom apartment in the heart of the French village up for sale after losing his high-profile libel cases against The Sun and a policeman.
Mr Mitchell was accused of calling PC Toby Rowland ‘a pleb’ during an astonishing 15-second outburst after the officer refused to let him ride his bike out of the main gates at Downing Street in September 2012.
But the multi-millionaire MP, who resigned from the Government but maintained he did not say the toxic word, was forced to sell assets after lawyers demanded more than £2million in fees following the humiliating High Court verdict.
A well-placed source said: ‘Everyone knows Andrew Mitchell accrued an enormous debt after losing his High Court libel case. He has a number of properties but was forced to sell the apartment to raise funds. The Mitchells seriously looked at which properties to sell and chose Val d’Isere because they only get to use it about once a year themselves.’
Mr Mitchell and his wife Sharon bought the apartment in the luxury Squaw Valley building in 2008 for about €1million (around £726,000 at today’s exchange rate).
It was put on the market for €1.3million this summer and a deal was agreed last month.
Mr Mitchell, a former investment banker who has lucrative earnings outside Parliament, owns several properties, including a house in Islington, North London, worth about £3million, a Victorian house in his Sutton Coldfield constituency worth around £500,000, and a farmhouse in Nottinghamshire worth more than £1million.
Mr Mitchell declined to comment.