Foreign matter: London embassy ownership | Insight | Property Week
https://www.propertyweek.com/features/foreign-matter-london-embassy-ownership/5100155.article
Also named in the Panama Papers is one of the richest men on the planet. Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, president of the UAE and Emir of Abu Dhabi, joined the list of embassy owners in February when he bought the freehold of 3 Hans Crescent in Knightsbridge, which houses the Embassies of Ecuador and Colombia, for £100,000.
The vendor, an offshore company registered in the Netherlands Antilles, bought the freehold for £441,000 in 2009. The Sheikh already owned the leasehold of five flats within the red brick-building, for which he paid collectively £15m.
The same building, which for the past six years has been the shelter of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, was also home to the Defence Office of Spain. In 2014, a company belonging to Christian Candy’s CPC Group bought the former mission, converted it into a luxury five-bedroom flat and sold it to a family of Saudi investors the following year.