8 Tuesday March 15 2022 | the times
News
A Russian oligarch whose £50 million
London mansion was stormed by
anarchists over the Ukraine war has
accused the British government of
colluding with the protesters.
Oleg Deripaska, who was sanctioned
last week in the UK over his close ties to
Vladimir Putin, said that ministers were
disrespecting the rule of law by failing
to remove the intruders.
Following his comments, four people
were held last night. The Metropolitan
Police said that a group had come down
from the balcony after about seven
hours and were arrested.
Footage taken by the protesters
provided a rare glimpse into the luxuri-
ous lifestyle of the industrialist, whose
fortune totals £2 billion.
Activists claiming to belong to the
London Makhnovists, a group affiliated
to the No Fixed Abode Anti-Fascists
(NFAAF), entered 5 Belgrave Square
just after 1am on Monday. They draped
Ukrainian flags and a banner reading
“this property has been liberated” and
“Putin go f*** yourself” over the
balcony.
The £50 million Belgravia property
belongs to the family of Deripaska,
whose high-life in Britain ended last
week when he was sanctioned by the
government.
Protesters said the mansion
appeared deserted and claimed that the
heating was off, the fridge empty and
the power off in some parts of the build-
ing. One said: “It is selfish that one man
had this all to himself.”
Footage captured by the self-de-
clared “property liberation front”
reveals a trove of riches inside the
six-storey property located in one of
London’s most expensive postcodes.
Despite the mansion being a second-
ary home – once used for less than four
weeks in 12 months – it is awash in the
Squatters occupy
oligarch’s £50m
Belgravia home
Mario Ledwith, Kieran Gair trappings of wealth. Its walls are
covered in artwork, including one
depicting Cossacks on horses similar to
works by the 19th century Russian
painter Franz Roubaud, valued at
approximately £60,000.
A statue that experts said looked like
the work of the celebrated British
sculptor Barbara Hepworth can also be
seen. Experts noted that there is one for
sale at Christie’s for £50,000 to £80,000,
although Deripaska’s is a larger, marble
piece and likely to be worth a great deal
more.
The footage shows a chandelier, a
grand piano and home cinema, as well
as walls painted with landscapes. The
stairways are adorned with Russian
Orthodox icons, each likely to be
valued at up to £10,000. A round table
appears to be the work of David Linley,
the Queen’s nephew.
The lower floors of the seven-bed-
room property, located close to numer-
ous embassies, feature a Turkish steam
bath, a gym and two kitchens.
Deripaska, 54, made his fortune in
the aluminium wars — the chaotic and
often violent privatisation of industry
that followed the break-up of the Soviet
Union. He grouped his businesses
together in the EN+ Group, which was
based in London and raised £1 billion
when it was floated on the London
Stock Exchange in 2017.
After gaining access to the building,
which is owned through a company
located in the British Virgin Islands, the
protesters proclaimed “this is just the
start”. One told The Times that affiliates
of the group intended to launch a
“summer of anarchy” that will see other
properties linked to oligarchs targeted
by protesters.
The London Makhnovists are a new-
ly formed collective named after
Nestor Makhno, a Ukrainian anarchist.
One member of the group, who did
not want to be identified, said: “I wanted
to do something for the people
suffering under war. If the people being
shelled wake up they will see that the
people of London care. It should be
handed over to Ukrainian refugees and
refugees of all nations. We are in it until
Putin ends the war and refugees are
homed.”
The group said they did not want to
occupy the building and were instead
staging a protest, which is legally
protected and prohibits their removal.
They claimed that their removal would
have to follow a High Court or County
Court order.
Deripaska also owns Hamstone
House on the exclusive St George’s Hill
estate near Weybridge, Surrey. The
eight-bedroom mansion, built in 1937,
has been carefully restored and
includes a swimming pool, sauna, gym
and extensive gardens.
In 2018, Deripaska and EN+ were
sanctioned in the United States. Under
a restructuring masterminded by the
former Tory minister Lord Barker of
Battle — who resigned his $4 million
executive chairmanship of the group
last week — Deripaska reduced his
shareholding, which then had business
sanctions lifted by Washington.
A legal challenge to personal
sanctions in the US failed, however,
and properties owned by him in New
York and Washington were raided last
October by the FBI in an investigation
into alleged sanctions evasion.
Deripaska said last week there was
nothing to support the government’s
£15 billion sanction hit.
He tweeted: “Since there’s not a
single fact in support of Boris’ cabinet’s
fantasies it will be for the courts and the
police to decide the future for all in this
sanctions story.”
Bob Seely, MP for Isle of Wight, used
parliamentary privilege last year to
describe Deripaska as “one of President
Putin’s most loyal oligarchs”.French police have detained an activist
who broke into a villa in Biarritz
belonging to President Putin’s daughter
and declared it a shelter for Ukrainian
refugees.
Pierre Haffner, a former business-
man who lived in Russia for 25 years,
may be prosecuted after leading pro-
Ukraine protesters into Alta Mira, the
seafront property used by Katerina
Tikhonova, 35, the younger daughter of
the Russian leader and his former wife.
The group posted on social media a
video tour of the villa, which was
bought for €4.5 million in 2012 by Kirill
Shamalov, Tikhonova’s former hus-
band. “This house was bought with the
money stolen by Putin and the Russian
mafia,” Haffner said. The video shows
marble-clad bathrooms, eight bed-
rooms, a music room with a piano and
guitars, a gaudy bar, a library and a
terrace overlooking the sea.
“We dedicate this action to Ukraine.
The oligarchic regime of Vladimir
Putin and his accomplices have leaked
hundreds of billions of euros from
Russia and Ukraine over the past 20
years,” Haffner said.
He wrote on Facebook: “Instead of a
luxurious retreat for the oligarchs
Putin-Shamalov, we decided to orga-
nise a place here for rehabilitation and
life for the victims of the Putin regime,
especially refugees from Ukraine and
Russia who have been forced to flee
war, repression and torture prisons.”
The police arrested Haffner yester-
day on suspicion of breaking and enter-News War in Ukraine
Putin daughter’s French villa invaded
Charles Bremner Paris ing after news of his group’s act was
circulated on Ukrainian and Russian
social media.
Like her sister Maria Vorontsova,
Katerina does not use the family sur-
name. They are the daughters of Lyud-
mila Ocheretny, 64, Putin’s former wife,
a former Aeroflot cabin attendant
whom he divorced in 2014. She is now
married to Artur Ocheretny and owns
a villa in Anglet, a resort adjoining Biar-
ritz. Putin, 69, is also thought to have
four children with Alina Kabaeva, 38, a
former Olympic gymnast.
When the Russian invasion began,
the Ocheretny villa was daubed with
obscene anti-Putin slogans in Ukraine’s
yellow and blue colours.
Putin still owns a villa in Biarritz,
which he bought in 1996 when he was a
civil servant in St Petersburg, the
French security service told Europe 1
radio. He put the house in the name of
one of his daughters after acquiring it
for $400,000 when he was earning less
than $1,000 a month. Europe 1 said MI
had told the French he was thought
already to be diverting money.
The Ukrainian flag was displayed at
Katerina Tikhonova’s villa in BiarritzVideo goes through the
keyhole into life of luxury
A
video filmed by squatters
who had just gained
access to the £50 million
home of Oleg Deripaska,
the sanctioned crony of
President Putin, is perhaps one of
the most extraordinary examples of
“through the keyhole” (Ben Ellery
writes).
The tour around the Belgravia
home begins in what appears to be
a study featuring artworks on the
wall, thought to be the work of
Gino Severini, the Italian painter
and leader of the futurist
movement.
Bottles of fizzy water are seen
scattered on the desk next to a
mahogany bookshelf as the tour
continues through the hallway and
past a Greek marble bust into a
drawing room where a plinth
displays a sculpture thought to be
by the celebrated British artistBarbara Hepworth, a leading figure
in modernism. It is likely that the
piece is worth about £1.5 million.
Inside the room is a huge glass
chandelier, an antique bevelled
mirror, bookcases, sofas and two
atlas globes.
The tour continues past another
chandelier to where a grand piano
is sitting.
According to Damon Burrows, at
Markson Pianos, it is likely to be a
restored Bösendorfer dating from
around the 1880s to the early 20th
century and is worth upwards of
£60,000.
The camera leans over a glass
banister and looks down on to a
custom-veneered £50,000 Linley
dining table on the ground floor
before heading up the stairs where
it settles on a grouping of Russian
icon artworks.
Inside a home cinema room is a