A total of 48% of all London properties owned by offshore haven companies are in Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea / Photo from UNIAN
A son of a one-time close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin is revealed today as the owner of a GBP 35 million mansion in London, after the government published a list of offshore-owned property in Britain worth more than GBP 200 billion, according to The Sunday Times.
Andrey Yakunin, who owns the eight-bedroom property in St John's Wood, north London, is the son of Vladimir Yakunin, a former member of the Russian president's inner circle who was blacklisted by the U.S. in 2014, The Sunday Times wrote on Sunday, March 20.
The owner's identity was confirmed to The Sunday Times after the Land Registry last week released a complete list of 40,000 offshore companies that own nearly 100,000 properties in England.
Many of them are in the most affluent areas of London.
Transparency International UK last year unearthed some "shocking," as it describes, statistics about the amount of anonymously owned properties in the UK, specifically in London, through complex money laundering processes. According to the organization, 48% of all London properties owned by offshore haven companies are in Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea. The statistics said that 36,342 London properties are held by hidden companies in offshore havens.
"No one – not the public, not the police, not you, and not even the Prime Minster – knows who owns those homes. There's a chance that many of these properties will be bought with clean funds, but there's also a chance that some of the world's most corrupt are stashing their stolen money in our precious property," the organization wrote in its letter to the next mayor of London published on Monday, March 14, 2016.