TEHRAN, YJC. Two wealthy Gulf Arabs are among the people who own apartments in London’s One Hyde Park, a building established by Nick and Christian Candy, together with Waterknights – an international property-development company, Vanity Fair magazine reported in a recent article.
The article revealed that head of finance for the government of Sharjah Sheikh Mohammed Saud Sultan al-Qasimi was said to have bought an $18.1 million apartment, while Qatar’s prime minister himself owned a triplex via a Cayman Islands company.
Qatar’s Premier Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani owns Waterknights.
Vanity Fair said there is one thing for certain about the tenants of One Hyde Park, where units are sold for almost $12,000 per Square foot.
"They are extremely wealthy, and most of them don’t want you know who they are and how they got their money.”
Among those as well mentioned in the article were top model Naomi Campbell’s property magnate boyfriend Vladislav Doronin, a Nigerian oil billionaire, a Kazakh singer, and Russian and Chinese business officials.
The identities of most of those who owned apartments in One Hyde Park were unclear, said the article, adding that most units were purchased through companies based in off-shore tax havens.
However, Nicholas Shaxson, who wrote the article, spent six month sifting through records from the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands to try and reveal the names of the building’s owners.
Five flats were bought for $123 million by Isle of Man companies under the name of Rose of Sharon, according to the article.
Irina Viktorovna Kharitonina and Viktor Kharitonin, who is said to be involved in Russia’s largest domestic drugmaker, founder and CEO of Channel IT Bassim Haidar and Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, were among the people said to own apartments in the building.