Russia’s wealthiest woman, Yelena Baturina, has paid £50 million ($79 million) for the largest private residence in London and will spend another £50 million adding a cinema and 24-car garage, Britain’s Sunday Times reported.
Baturina, who denied a similar report last year, rejected the latest one as “absurd” on Monday and threatened to sue.
Britain’s Sunday Times said the 3,700-square-meter Witanhurst mansion, which is dwarfed only by Buckingham Palace, which isn’t a private home, was sold to a British Virgin Islands-based company called Safran Holdings.
“However, sources in north London property circles say the real owner is Yelena Baturina,” the report said.
It said the new owner had sent plans to local authorities over the past few weeks to expand the dilapidated mansion by digging a two-level basement and constructing a new wing complete with a 33-seat movie theater, swimming pool, gymnasium, beauty salon, wine cellar and staff quarters.
An elevator would transport vehicles out of the underground 24-car garage, the report said.
The property’s main house was built in the early 18th century and has been filmed in several period dramas.
Baturina, who is married to Mayor Yury Luzhkov, issued a sharp denial through Inteko, the real estate developer that she controls.
“This information is absurd,” Inteko spokesman Gennady Terebkov said in a statement. “Inteko’s press service has repeatedly officially stated that neither Yelena Baturina nor Inteko nor their authorized representatives have ever bought this house.”
Baturina also denied a British media report in July 2008 that she had bought the 2.8-hectare property in northern London for £100 million.
Terebkov said the Times faced a lawsuit over the article.
“The Sunday Times will be forced to publish a retraction of this untrue information or the newspaper will be sued,” he said.
Baturina is ranked by Forbes magazine as Russia’s wealthiest woman with a fortune of $900 million, down from $4.2 billion last year before the economic crisis hit. She has denied allegations that her wealth is linked to her marriage to Moscow’s mayor.
Earlier this year, Baturina won a battle to buy a million-dollar Austrian chalet where she and Luzhkov have been regular vacationers for several years.
Austrian authorities had refused to approve the sale of the mansion in the exclusive ski resort of Kitzbühel, citing the fact that the buyer was a company registered in Vienna. Baturina won permission in February after she agreed to buy the house personally.
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