A house on the Côte d’Azur has just become the most expensive house in the world, beating by many times the previous record held by Lakshmi Mittal’s house in Kensington Palace Gardens. An unnamed Russian oligarch has paid 500 million euros for the Villa Leopolda overlooking Cap Ferrat. The vendor, Lily Safra, is the widow of the Swiss banker, Edmund Safra, killed in 1999 in a criminal arson attack (some speculated at the time that he may have been killed by the Russian Mafia). The reason why the price rose to such heights is that she did not want to sell. The Villa was originally built by the Belgian King, Leopold II, and was later owned by (among others) Gianni Agnelli. To give an idea of how inflated the price is, the French government recently sold a former Ministry building, an enormous hotel particulier near the Invalides in central Paris with a surface area of 7,000 square metres for 142 million euros. Incidentally, the purchase of that property was Russian too. [Agnès Leclair, Le Figaro, 8 August 2008]
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