London properties seized from crooked tycoon to fetch £11m at auction
News of the sales, which include the £4.5 million Winchmore Hill mansion where X Factor contestants lived, comes as David Cameron hosts his anti-corruption summit today and moved this week to stop property-buyers hiding behind offshore companies.
A High Court judge ruled that Zhaksylyk Zharimbetov helped Kazakh billionaire Mukhtar Ablyazov misappropriate funds from the Kazakh BTA bank. BTA, which was backed by Royal Bank of Scotland, collapsed and was bailed out by Kazakh taxpayers in 2008.
The two men moved to London, where BTA chased them through the courts for compensation.
Ablyazov left Britain while BTA was suing him in the High Court and was tracked down in France. Zharimbetov's whereabouts are unknown.
Judge Mr Justice Teare ruled in 2013 that he helped Ablyazov misappropriate cash from BTA and deemed him liable for $1.5 billion. Last year, he was sentenced to 15 months in jail for being in contempt of court by apparently fleeing the UK.
Staff at Hogan Lovells, London lawyers for BTA, spent years trawling through offshore accounts and shell companies to prove that the properties were Zharimbetov's and in recent months obtained court orders to seize them.
The homes include Levens, in Winchmore Hill, which was advertised for auction in last night's Evening Standard with a guide price of £4.5 million-plus. Once home to Rod Stewart, it has an acre of landscaped gardens, an indoor swimming pool and a sauna.
Zharimbetov registered it as being owned by a British Virgin Islands company called Smaland Property Holdings, which bought it for £5.6 million in late 2009.
Longwood, a £4 million house in Virginia Water, Surrey, will also be sold, and the sale of a three-bedroom flat near The Bishops Avenue, currently estimated on Zoopla to be worth £2.2 million, is being delayed because it is occupied by tenants.
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