20 2GM Tuesday October 20 2020 | the times
News
RAY BURMISTONThe president of the UAE has created a
£5.5 billion British property empire that
rivals the land holdings of the nation’s
wealthiest aristocratic families.
Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan,
who is also emir of Abu Dhabi, has used
a series of secretive offshore companies
to buy up prime properties across
central and west London.
The Times reported claims earlier
this year that control of the ruler’s
assets had been handed to a committee
headed by his half-brother, Sheikh
Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the
owner of Manchester City football club.
The scale of the property invest-
ments was revealed this year at a High
Court hearing, which was told that the
sheikh and his family owned at least
140 London properties, including the
Berkeley Square Estate, the home of
Annabel’s nightclub, and the former
BHS building in Oxford Street.
Research by the Sarawak Report
website and The Guardian has identified
other properties in the portfolio,
including the freehold of the embassy
of Ecuador in Knightsbridge, the nine-
storey One Kensington Gardens, where
flats are on sale for £26 million, and the
Time Life office block in New Bond
Street.
The sheikh’s property interests are
managed from Tilney House in Mayfair
by a Liechtenstein-registered company
called Holbein Anstalt. It began buying
British property in the 1970s on behalf
of the sheikh and his father. The
properties are owned through a
network of 24 companies based in the
British Virgin Islands.
The emir’s British homes includeUAE owns £5.5bn
of British property
Ascot Place, a grade II listed mansion
set in 400 acres near Windsor Great
Park, Berkshire, which he bought in
1989 for a then record £18 million.
Sheikh Khalifa, 72, is chairman of the
Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, a
sovereign wealth fund with up to
£650 billion in assets, and has a family
fortune of about £120 billion.
Berkeley Square Holdings, the set of
companies that owns the sheikh’s
properties, is in a legal dispute with
Lancer Property Asset Management
over the running of the portfolio.
The law firm Eversheds Sutherland is
reported to manage 80 per cent of the
sheikh’s British property portfolio. The
firm did not respond to a request for
comment yesterday but told The
Guardian that it had acted “strictly in
accordance” with its legal and regulatory
obligations.
The sheikh’s London property
holdings are unlikely to match those of
Hugh Grosvenor, 29, the seventh Duke
of Westminster, whose Grosvenor
Group owns 300 acres of Belgravia and
Mayfair. The duke and his family are
worth £10.3 billion, according to The
Sunday Times Rich List this year.
The emir’s portfolio probably
surpasses the wealth of aristocratic
landowners, including Earl Cadogan
(estimated fortune of £6.8 billion) who
owns 93 acres of Kensington and
Chelsea, and the 110 acres of central
London each owned by Baroness
Howard de Walden (£4.3 billion) and
Viscount Portman (£2 billion).
The Crown Estate, whose profits
fund the work of the royal family, owns
£8.4 billion of central London property
with a total portfolio of British property
worth £13.4 billion.David Brown
The sheikh who allegedly sexually
assaulted a British curator at a literary
festival in the Gulf should be arrested
for torture, according to the rights
barrister who has taken up the case.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws,
QC, argues that, as a member of the
ruling family of Abu Dhabi, the sheikh
had his alleged victim in his power
when she was taken to his private villa.
The Crown Prosecution Service has
been sent a formal opinion by solicitors
acting for the complainant at Lady
Kennedy’s request.
Caitlin McNamara, 32, waived her
anonymity to tell The Sunday Times
that she had been sexually assaulted byDominic Kennedy
‘Arrest sheikh for torture’
Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak al-Nahy-
an, minister for tolerance in the United
Arab Emirates, on Valentine’s Day.
He has denied the allegations. His so-
licitors, Schillings, said: “Our client is
surprised and saddened by this allega-
tion, which arrives eight months after
the alleged incident and via a national
newspaper. The account is denied.”
Ms McNamara had been working at
the sheikh’s ministry on the launch of the
Hay Literary Festival in Abu Dhabi.
Sheikh Nahyan, 69, allegedly kissed and
groped her at his villa.
Lady Kennedy said: “The parameters
of torture have been enlarged in recent
cases through recognition that cruel
and inhumane treatment can also be
psychological or involve sexual abuse.”Pause for thought Kylie Minogue,
Phoebe and Isobel Waller-Bridge,
Idris Elba and Michael Palin are
among 250 celebrities pictured
in the Take a Moment online
exhibition for the charity Mind