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Times after the Land Registrylast week released a completelist of 40,000 offshore com-panies that own nearly100,000properties inEngland.Manyofthemareinthemost
affluent areas of London.The new list yields clues to
other oligarchs and theirfamilies who have acquiredproperty in London.Vladimir Yakunin was once
renowned as one of Putin’sclosest allies and one of themost powerful men in Russia.When Russia invaded
Ukraine in 2014, hewasblack-listed by the US Treasurydepartment as part of Putin’sinner circle.This banned himfrom the US and froze anyassets Yakunin held there. TheBritishgovernmentdeclined tojoin the US in applying a ban.TheLondonpropertyowned
by Andrey Yakunin has eightbedrooms, a pool, cinemaroom and wine store. Twolive-in servants are registeredthere on the electoral roll. Themansionisheldthroughanoff-shore company, TerphosFinancialCorporation,basedinthe British Virgin Islands.It is understood Andrey
Yakunin owns the house as aninvestment property. Thecompany bought the house for£23m in 2013.Andrey, an investor in a
Russian hotel chain, also has aregistered address in Hamp-stead. This property is worthabout £10m and is ownedthrough another offshorecompany, Diamondrock, butThe Sunday Times has beenunable toestablishtheultimateowner.In August last year Vladimir
Yakunin stepped down fromhis role as head of RussianRailways. Russian mediareportedhehad fallen outwithPutin over his son’s decision toapply for a British passport,although a Russian Railwaysspokesman said he had left topursue aparliamentary career.Andreynowhas aBritishpass-port.
The Land Registry databasereveals that in Weybridge,Surrey, one of the wealthiestareas of Britain, there are 141mansions owned offshore,worth a total £425m.Among them is Hamstone
House, a sprawling 10-bedroom mansion owned byEdenfield Investments inCyprus. However, two namesappearing on Land Registrydocuments for the house —Graham Bonham-Carter andPavelEzoubov—hintat its trueowner: they are associates ofthe Russian aluminium tycoonand Tory donor Oleg Deri-paska.Bonham-Carter, a second
cousin of the actress, HelenaBonham-Carter, has workedas a consultant for Deripaska.Ezoubov isDeripaska’s cousin.Edenfield Investments,
which bought the property in2001, has a forwarding addressto a £50m property in Bel-gravia. This mansion is ownedby another of Deripaska’s off-shore companies.A High Court case in 2006
refers to both properties,which are part of Deripaska’sportfolio of more than 20luxury houses around theworld. In a judgment, Mr Jus-tice Eady said the Russian bil-lionaire held his housesthrough offshore companies.Thiswas“largely forreasons
concerned with inheritancetax”, said the judge.Chido Dunn, a senior cam-
paigner at Global Witness,believes greater transparencyis needed over the offshoreownership of properties inBritain. “The government istaking concrete steps to tacklethis by setting up registers ofthe real owners of companiesregistered in the UK, which isverywelcome,” she said.“But for these measures to
have teeth, the governmentmust force theUK’s taxhavensto set up the same registers, orwe simply move the secrecyoffshore.”
@joshtboswell
MP’s home loanfrom union fund
financial dealingswith theNUM,making it clear to thepublic that he hasn’t beenusing his old trade union as aprivate piggy bank.”The commissioner is
already considering acomplaint that Lavery did notdeclare in the Commonsregister of members’ interestsmore than £60,000 inredundancy pay from theunion.He and NUM
Northumberland Area havenot explained another£85,426 listed as “past generalsecretary redundancy costs”
in the union accounts.Lavery has been criticised
for accepting almost £1.6m indonations from sick andinjuredminers to fund thedeclining NUMbranchbetween 1996 and 2010.During that time he receivedaround £750,000 in pay,pension contributions andother benefits.Lavery said this weekend:
“The arrangement with theNUM ended over eight yearsago. Any suggestion ofimpropriety is inaccurate andI reject it completely.”
@stjamesl
JEREMYCORBYN’S tradeunions spokesman, IanLavery, received a home loanbelieved to be around£250,000 from aminers’benevolent fund set up by theunion that he ran beforebecoming anMP.The National Union
of Mineworkers(Northumberland Area)provident and benevolentfundwas listed as the lenderon Lavery’s house by the LandRegistry last month but theloan is no longer chargedagainst the property.This weekend Lavery, who
became anMP in 2010, saidthe arrangement had endedmore than eight years ago butwould not saywhether he hadrepaid the loan orwhether ithad beenwritten off. Theshadowminister also refusedto disclose the terms of theloan, whichwasmade in1994, two years after hebecame general secretary ofNUMNorthumberland Area.Lavery, who denies any
wrongdoing, now faces callsto come clean and there havebeen demands for theparliamentary commissionerfor standards, KathrynHudson, to investigate.Paul Scully, a ToryMPwho
haswritten to Hudson, said:“As Labour’s shadowministerfor trade unions, it’s essentialthat Ian Lavery is totally openand transparent about his
James LyonsDEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR
Ian Laverysaid the£250,000 loanarrangementended eightyears ago
A SON of a one-time close allyof Vladimir Putin is revealedtoday as the owner of a £35mmansion in London, after thegovernment published a list ofoffshore-owned property inBritain worth more than£200bn.Andrey Yakunin, who owns
theeight-bedroomproperty inSt John’sWood,northLondon,is the son of Vladimir Yakunin,a former member of the Rus-sian president’s inner circlewho was blacklisted by the USin 2014.The owner’s identity was
confirmed to The Sunday
Josh Boswell, MarkHollingsworth and TheSunday Times Data Team
Son of Putinally has £35mLondon house
The photographer David Yarrow was standing chest-deep in a crocodile-infested swamp when he took this picture of a male orang-utan leaping from a tree atCamp Leakey, in south Borneo’s Tanjung Puting national park. The orang-utan conservation centre was set up in 1971 and is the oldest of its kind in the world.
DAVID YARROW
NEVERMINDME, MATE, THERE’S A CROC BEHIND YOU
Oleg Deripaska owns Hamstone House in Weybridge, Surrey