London skyscraper, a stark symbol of the housing crisis

Tony Gosling tony at cultureshop.org.uk
Wed May 25 13:09:17 BST 2016 


The London skyscraper that is a stark symbol of the housing crisis

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/revealed-foreign-buyers-own-two-thirds-of-tower-st-george-wharf-london

Exclusive: Tower underoccupied, astonishingly 
expensive, mostly foreign owned, and with dozens 
of apartments held through secretive offshore firms
<http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/revealed-foreign-buyers-own-two-thirds-of-tower-st-george-wharf-london#img-1>
Russian billionaire, Nigerian former bank chairman and Kyrgyz v
<http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/revealed-foreign-buyers-own-two-thirds-of-tower-st-george-wharf-london#img-1>
  Russian billionaire, Nigerian former bank 
chairman and Kyrgyz vodka tycoon among owners at 
St George Wharf tower Composite: BBA Travel / Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy

<http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/http://www.theguardian.com/profile/robertbooth>Robert 
Booth and 
<http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/http://www.theguardian.com/profile/helena-bengtsson>Helena 
Bengtsson Tuesday 24 May 2016 15.16 BSTLast 
modified on Wednesday 25 May 201610.23 BST

A Russian billionaire whose business partner is a 
close ally of Vladimir Putin, the former chairman 
of a defunct Nigerian bank and a Kyrgyz vodka 
tycoon appear to be among more than 130 foreign 
buyers in Britain’s tallest residential skyscraper.

Almost two-thirds of homes in the Tower, a 
50-storey apartment complex 
in<http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/http://www.theguardian.com/uk/london>London, 
are in foreign ownership, with a quarter held 
through secretive offshore companies based in tax 
havens, a Guardian investigation has revealed.

The first residents of the landmark development 
arrived in October 2013, but many of the homes 
are barely occupied, with some residents saying 
they only use them for a fraction of the year.

The revelations about the Tower are likely to be 
seized on by campaigners and politicians as the 
starkest example yet of the housing crisis 
gripping the capital, in which too many new homes 
are sold abroad as investments and left largely 
empty while fewer and fewer young people can 
afford to buy or even rent in the city.

The five-storey £51m penthouse with views across 
to the Thames to the Palace of Westminster is 
ultimately owned by the family of former Russian 
senator 
<http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/04/mega-rich-homes-tour-london-oligarchs-russia-alexei-navalny-putin>Andrei 
Guriev, a well-placed source has told the 
Guardian. His family 
<http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/30/georgian-soap-magnates-russian-oligarchs-joined-in-grand-absurdity>already 
owns Witanhurst in Highgate, north London, the 
biggest mansion in London after Buckingham Palace.
<http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/revealed-foreign-buyers-own-two-thirds-of-tower-st-george-wharf-london#img-2>
St George Wharf in London

At 23,000sq ft, the Tower penthouse is 24 times 
larger than the average new three-bedroom home in 
the UK. It was bought in May 2014 but has yet to 
be lived in. As part of a lengthy refurbishment, 
Guriev is understood to be installing a Russian 
Orthodox chapel that has had to be carried piece by piece up the elevators.

Lower down is a £2.7m flat owned by Ebitimi 
Banigo, a former Nigerian government minister. In 
2012, Banigo was crowned king of Okpoama, in the 
oil-rich Niger delta, at a ceremony attended by 
the then president, Goodluck Jonathan. In 2005, 
he was investigated by Nigeria’s Economic and 
Financial Crimes Commission following the 
collapse of the All States Trust Bank he chaired. 
He was later named in the Nigerian senate for 
owing the bank 15bn naira (£50m). He was not charged with any offence.

Other owners named in Land Registry records 
include a Kurdish oil magnate, an Egyptian 
snack-food mogul, an Indonesian banker, a 
Uruguayan football manager and a former Formula 1 
racing driver. About 131 of the 210 apartments 
for which title deeds were available are in 
foreign ownership, analysis suggests. Owners from 
Singapore told the Guardian they spend as little 
as two months a year in the flats, which are 
empty the rest of the time. Meanwhile, town hall 
records show that nobody is registered to vote at 184 of the homes.

The Tower does not have any affordable housing, 
which has been placed mainly at the rear of the 
larger St George Wharf housing development at 
Vauxhall facing a dual carriageway rather than the river.

The extent of the international selloff emerged 
after the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, 
<http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/16/sadiq-khan-developers-housing-plan-london-mayor-affordable>pledged 
to crack down on foreign ownership of new homes, 
saying he would consider a rule that they must be 
sold to UK residents only for the first six months of marketing.

“There is no point in building homes if they are 
bought by investors in the Middle East and Asia,” 
he said earlier this month. “I don’t want homes being left empty.”

The prime minister, 
<http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/11/fight-against-corruption-begins-with-political-will>David 
Cameron, has also complained about the sale of 
high-value properties in London to people 
overseas through anonymous shell companies and 
announced that such companies will in future be 
obliged to declare their true beneficial owners.

At least 31 of the apartments have been sold to 
buyers in the far east markets of Hong Kong, 
Singapore, Malaysia and China; 15 were sold to 
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; and 
others were sold to buyers in Russia, India, 
Iraq, Qatar and Switzerland. About 15 more appear 
to have been sold to foreign buyers from China, 
Saudi Arabia, Russia and Nigeria.

A spokesman for the developer St George said: 
“Although some homes in the Tower have overseas 
owners, it is wrong to suggest that foreign 
owners dominate the London market. Savills 
estimated that in 2013-14, non-resident overseas 
investors accounted for just 7% of the London residential market.”

The developer said 30% of the overall St George 
Wharf development is affordable housing, with 389 
units built in neighbouring blocks. He added: 
“The range of facilities in the Tower, from a 
concierge to a spa and gym, appeal to all buyers 
– UK as well as international.”

Forbes magazine estimates Guriev is worth more 
than $4bn (£2.7bn) and he shares ownership of 
PhosAgro, Europe’s largest producer of phosphate 
fertiliser, with Vladimir Litvinenko, a campaign 
manager for Russia’s president. Guriev appears to 
have bought the property through a British Virgin 
Islands company, Arabella Properties. His 
ownership of the penthouse has been kept such a 
closely guarded secret that even the building’s 
managers did not know who owned it. The BVI 
company that formally owns Guriev’s penthouse 
gives as its address the Jersey office of Opus 
Private, a firm of advisers promising a service 
that “exploits every legitimate opportunity to 
protect and preserve family wealth”.

The Guardian approached Guriev’s London lawyer, 
his family spokesman and his company spokesman, 
but all declined to comment or to confirm or deny the family ownership.

Guriev was last year revealed as the owner of 
Witanhurst in Highgate, where he has built a 
40,000sq ft basement with swimming pool, cinema, 
gym, staff quarters and parking for 25 cars.

The profile of the Tower’s owners is set to raise 
questions over how far UK residents, facing a 
housing crisis, will benefit from the 
neighbouring Nine Elms development where 20,000 
mostly luxury high-rise apartments are being 
built in what has been dubbed “Dubai-on-Thames”.

Title deeds for the Tower suggest that in 2014, 
Vitaly Orlov, a Russian fishing tycoon based in 
Hong Kong, bought the whole of the 39th floor for 
£13m. Orlov’s Ocean Trawlers company is the 
world’s largest supplier of cod and haddock but 
has this year been accused by Greenpeace of 
threatening pristine Arctic ecosystems by fishing 
further north in the 
<http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/28/arctic-sea-ice-record-low-winter>Barents 
Sea as the ice retreats amid global warming.

Orlov declined to comment, saying through a 
spokesman that he was “not interested in sharing 
his private sphere with the general public”. The 
Barents Sea fishery “has been independently 
certified to the MSC standard 
 a 
well-established approach based on the best 
available science,” the spokesman said.

Another named owner is Sharshenbek Abdykerimov, a 
former MP and powerful businessman in the former 
Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan. Abdykerimov owns 
the bestselling Ayu vodka brand as well as a 
conglomerate of other businesses, and he was 
recently elected as chairman of the country’s 
national Olympic committee. In 2013, he 
co-founded the pro-government Kyrgyzstan party.

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