Oh wow... the MSM are playing catch-up again.
Yer've gotta hand it to the BBC, it's like a sudden act of God has dropped the scales from their eyes!
Land-banking is something even BBC Journalists dabbled in -certainly in the Lake District and Devon area, and only now
are they applying their crack 'Pandora Papers reporting team' onto the case.
Gimme a break!
........................................................................................
Quote:Pandora Papers: The secret owners of UK property worth billionsArchived BBC Article:
'The secret owners of more than 1,500 UK properties bought using offshore firms have been uncovered by a BBC investigation.
The details are featured in the Pandora Papers leak of offshore financial documents and list property with an estimated value in
excess of £4bn.
The owners include high-profile foreign politicians, individuals accused of corruption and UK political donors.
Ministers say they will bring in a new law when they have parliamentary time.
Successive Conservative governments have pledged to introduce legislation making it compulsory to name those owning property
via foreign companies in a bid to stamp out money-laundering.
Among the revelations:
*The wife of retail magnate Sir Philip Green went on a buying spree of London property while the couple's recently
sold High Street empire teetered on the verge of collapse.
*The Qatari ruling family purchased two of London's most expensive homes through offshore companies, saving
millions of pounds in tax.
*Ukrainian billionaire Gennadiy Bogolyubov, who is under investigation by the FBI and had hundreds of millions in
assets frozen in a fraud case, owns more than £400m of UK property.
*A £40m London office block is owned by the son of sanctioned Russian oligarch Mikhail Gutseriev.
The BBC worked with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the Guardian, Finance Uncovered and other
media outlets to identify in the leaked files the individuals behind overseas companies that owned property in England and Wales.
Owning real estate through an offshore firm is legal, and there is no suggestion of wrongdoing in simply using a foreign company
to purchase property. However, the UK government recently raised its own assessment of the money laundering risk for the property
market from "medium" to "high".
The greatest level of risk is where there are "difficulties in determining the ultimate beneficial owners", according to a Home Office
report in December 2020. It comes as a number of world leaders -including the King of Jordan and the ruling family of Azerbaijan
-have featured in the Pandora Papers leak after buying property in the UK using offshore companies...'
Yer've gotta hand it to the BBC, it's like a sudden act of God has dropped the scales from their eyes!
Land-banking is something even BBC Journalists dabbled in -certainly in the Lake District and Devon area, and only now
are they applying their crack 'Pandora Papers reporting team' onto the case.
Gimme a break!
........................................................................................
Quote:Billionaire’s Row: The North London road crammed with empty mansionsMyLondon:
Bishops Avenue in North London is nicknamed for its high house prices but many of the mansions on the street sit empty
'Tucked away off the A1 close to Hampstead Heath, one of the world’s most expensive neighbourhoods sits in silence.
The Bishops Avenue, also called ‘Billionaires’ Row’ is home to 66 sprawling mansions, ranging in style and value.
The Avenue isn’t shy about its property market, with the average cost of a property there settling around £15 million.
But for all the excess and undoubted glamour, ‘Billionaires’ Row’ hides a dirty secret - many of its properties are deserted
and derelict. Naturally, it takes a fairly successful person to even contemplate arranging a viewing at a property on the Avenue,
let alone purchasing one.
According to Trevor Abrahmsohn, the chairman and founder of Glentree, who are managing several properties on the avenue,
people that buy on The Bishops Avenue do so for the statement as well as the location. Mr Abrahmsohn explained: “We are a
very attractive place for wealthy entrepreneurs who want to invest in this country and we want to see them.
“Bishops Avenue is the epicentre of their interests because there’s no poor man that lives there.
“It’s a place for important people who want to make statements and they can have a country estate 15 minutes from London.”
However, to walk down the Avenue, it would be hard to say for certain which properties are occupied and which have struggled
to find buyers.
Many of the gated estates on the Avenue carry no trespass signs and the dereliction of some of the buildings is plain to see from
the road. In 2014, an investigation by the Guardian found that a third of the mansions on the street had nobody living in them, and
that many of them had been left to decay.
To many, the idea that you could buy a house worth over £10 million just to leave it empty is baffling, but the average property owner
on The Avenue is anything but ordinary.
In its illustrious history, the majority of the houses on the Avenue have been owned by international millionaires ranging from monarchs
to property tycoons. The House of Saud famously sold ten properties along The Bishops for £73 million, while the Sultan of Brunei is
thought to own at least one house on the Avenue.
To understand why the residents of Bishops Avenue were prepared to pay such exorbitant fees for their properties, we asked Mr
Abrahmsohn how the street had made its name. He explained: “It’s always been an affluent area, it used to be a hunting ground
for the bishops which is where it gets its name. “To live in Bishops Avenue is a cross between a London estate and a townhouse
because the land can be as big as 11 acres. It’s quite considerable and you won’t find that anywhere else in the world.
“You have a leafy cherished area which is nestled between two villages with two golf courses on the doorstep, 900 acres of heathland,
the finest school of any metropolis in the world in Highgate School with 75 acres of recreation land and a private and public airport
within half an hour. “You pay a price which is 20% of what you’d pay for a similar house of the same size in Belgravia.
“It ticks all the boxes. When you live in Bishops Avenue you live in a small to medium sized hotel within the grounds.”
Although Mr Abrahmsohn paints a compelling picture for the benefits of the Avenue, it is not immediately clear why this unassuming
patch of North London outshines other metropolis neighbourhoods found in Berlin, Paris or New York.
The answer, Mr Abrahmsohn says, is all to do with the history of the capital.
He said: “As London began emerging into a financial colossus from the souvenir town that perhaps Paris is today, it attracted wealthy
entrepreneurs from all over the world. “The UK has exported more tradition and culture abroad than any other country.
“The residents have grown up reading English Literature, watching English films and they dream of having a piece of English heritage.
“And the way they can do that is by buying a property in London, most of international friends don’t think there’s a country outside of the
capital. "London is one of the three most important diplomatic posts in the world not because it’s the greatest political centre, but because
it’s the most desirable. “The centres of excellence are all in London.
“You have all the facilities you could ever want, in the COVID era you wouldn’t have to go anywhere, everything is there.”
Why then are so many of the houses lying derelict and deserted?
This Mr Abrahmsohn asserts, is just part and parcel of the development process. He explained: “Some of them aren’t being lived in because
a development is being sought, planning permission is being sought and during that time the properties are a little dishevelled and derelict.
“It’s only a matter of time before that changes.”...'
Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe.