VODKA TYCOON AND OLIGARCH BUILDING CHURCH IN HIS FLAT
Five-storey flat for fertiliser tycoon
FORMER Russian senator and fertiliser magnate Andrei Guriev is said to have bought his five-storey penthouse for £51million in May 2014 — but that’s a drop in the Thames when you have a reputed net worth of £2.8 billion.
Mr Guriev reportedly bought the complex at the top of the tower through Arabella Properties, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. He has yet to live in it.
The 24th richest man in Russia, the devout oligarch is apparently assembling an entire Russian Orthodox chapel in his penthouse, which is having to be transported piece by piece up the lifts to its eventual home nearly 600ft above London.
Last year, he was identified as the owner of Witanhurst, the second-largest house in London — pipped only by Buckingham Palace — for which a shell company registered in the British Virgin Islands paid £50 million in 2008.
Representatives for Mr Guriev declined to confirm or comment on the penthouse’s ownership.
Tribal chief who paid £2.7m
EMMANUEL Ebitimi Banigo, a tribal chief, owns an apartment in the tower for which he paid £2.7 million. A banker and an economist, he
graduated from Harvard University in 1975 and worked in London at Chase Manhattan Bank before returning to his native Nigeria to continue his stellar financial career, which he combined with politics.
He rose to become Federal Minister of Science and Technology, although his political career was stymied after the collapse of a bank which he chaired.
He was later named in the Nigerian senate as owing the All States Trust Bank £50million, although he was not charged with any offence.
Singapore magnate visits just twice a year
Like many of flats in the tower, the apartment owned by Singaporean multi-millionaire busi-nessman Chong Men Lai is just one of a portfolio of properties its fabulously wealthy owner has dotted around the globe.
The managing director of a services company which employs more than 600 people, Mr Lai also owns another property in London, as well as a holiday house in Australia.
He bought his apartment on the 23rd floor of the tower for £2.1million in January 2014, but is now selling it for £2.6 million.
Mr Lai admitted that he only used the flat twice in a year. ‘it is basically a holiday home for myself and my family,’ he said.
Hong Kong fishing king in £13m flat
THOUGHT to be the owner of the entire 39th floor of the Vauxhall Tower, for which he paid £13mil-lion in June 2014, Vitaly orlov is the founder of ocean Trawlers, a Hong kong-based fishing business that claims to be the world’s largest sup-plier of cod and haddock from the North Atlantic, and supplies some 300,000 tonnes of fish a year to more than 20 countries in five continents.
According to greenpeace, Mr orlov’s firm is threatening the ecosystem of the Barents Sea, off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia, by fishing too far north, but the company denies this.
A spokesman would not comment on the property’s ownership, saying orlov was ‘not interested in sharing his private sphere with the public’.
The Olympics boss and drinks mogul
THE owner of several businesses in his native kyrgyzstan, Sharshenbek Abdykeri-mov cut his commer-cial teeth when he was a student by regularly flying to Moscow to buy essential goods, which he then brought back by train to sell at home. Abdykerimov’s biggest moneyspinner these days is Ayu vodka, which is sold all over the world. Local media say the former member of parliament is capable of ‘finding a common language with any government’, though concerns have been voiced that he has been able to build up a monopoly in the drinks market.
He is also the founder of the pro-govern-ment kyrgyzstan Party and chairman of his country’s olympic committee.
The kyrgyzstan government named Ayu as ‘the best taxpayer of the year’ of its district, an honour that may make Mr Abdykerimov unique among his fellow occasional residents of the Vauxhall Tower.