The US$45 million penalty! Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov once almost bought the French Riviera’s Villa La Leopolda on King Leopold II of Belgium’s former land, but paid hefty fines instead
- Villa La Leopolda sits on land in the French Riviera once owned by King Leopold II of Belgium and was used in Hitchcock’s 1955 film, To Catch a Thief, with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly
- Prokhorov has quite the fortune: he sold the Brooklyn Nets to Alibaba executive Joseph Tsai and built the Onexim group together with fellow billionaire, Vladimir Potanin
Everything has a price, and when it’s one of the best of its kind, that price only gets more eye-watering. Russian billionaire and playboy Mikhail Prokhorov was willing to pay around US$500 million for a majestic villa on the French Riviera back in 2008. Today, the house is thought to be worth around US$750 million.
To ensure he snagged the Villa La Leopolda, sat on land once owned by King Leopold II of Belgium, Prokhorov put down a 10 per cent deposit to become the owner of one of the most expensive houses in the world.
Thanks to the global credit crunch, he didn’t end up buying the house. In 2010, a court found him liable for the down-payment though and not only did he lose those millions, but he also had to shell out an extra US$1.2 million in interest. Not that it seems to have cramped his style much – today, according to Forbes, he is worth US$11.3 billion.
So how exactly did it all go down?
Falling foul of the French way
As per French property law, once a sale contract has been signed, a deposit can only be refunded during an initial 10-day “cooling-off” period.
In 2010, a court in Nice ruled in favour of Villa La Leopolda’s owner, Lily Safra, who got to keep her home and the extra million or so. Sadly, Safra recently died at the age of 87, leaving behind four children from her four marriages.
Billionaire businessman Prokhorov, now 57, made several attempts to convince Safra to sell Villa La Leopolda via Belgian real estate entrepreneur Ignace Meuwissen. Ultimately, she accepted an offer, only for events to deny him the home he always wanted and leaving him to pick up the tab.