The Steeple Times

Category: Wealth

  • ‘Bathtub Bonk Pad’ Back On Market – Ghislaine Maxwell London Home For Sale (Again) For Bonkers £3.25m Price

    ‘Bathtub Bonk Pad’ Back On Market – Ghislaine Maxwell London Home For Sale (Again) For Bonkers £3.25m Price

    WORLD EXCLUSIVE – Ghislaine Maxwell’s notorious London home –the very pad that caused Prince Andrew to pay out £12 million over sexual cavorting allegations relating to a “bathtub bonk” in 2001 – is astoundingly back up for sale for a bonkers sum nearly 100% higher than she ‘sold’ it for just 3 years ago; much of the mucky madam’s furniture bizarrely remains

    Just as the meddling mate of the mendacious mucky madam and her pension pot plundering papa that is Peter Mandelson has been ‘anointed’ in Game of Thrones style as Keir Starmer’s ambassador to the United States of America, it can be revealed that the infamous former London home of Ghislaine Maxwell is back on the market.

     

    Whilst properties, however sordid their histories, come up for sale now and again – for example, when we featured five of the worst ‘murder location houses’ offered for sale in November 2022, we were inundated with further suggestions – the totally unsurprising detail in the current Chestertons listing for 44 Kinnerton Street, Belgravia is that there is no mention of this mews house’s infamous past owner-occupier.

     

    Interestingly, however, the agency’s ‘current’ photographs of what The Steeple Times mocked in January 2022 as “Randy Andy’s Bathtub Bonk Pad” – given what allegedly went on between the Duke of York and a then 17-year-old then going by the name Virginia Roberts in the first-floor, full-sized bathtub of the residence on the 10th March 2001 – show a property that still includes free-standing furnishings that were present when representatives of the then incarcerated Miss Maxwell sold on 19th April 2021 for £1.75 million against a far more punchy initial asking price of £2.6 million. Indeed, it does seem most curious that the ‘purchasers’ decided to keep a set of naff 1970s tables and chairs that presumably belonged to the convicted sex trafficker – especially given they decided to throw out an equally gaudy pair of velvet curtains from the house that have now ended up on display in a Bristol art gallery as part of exhibition of all sorts of odd things that is rather appropriately titled Grey Unpleasant Land.

     

    In January 2022, ‘The Steeple Times’ was the first publication to share a photograph of the then unrenovated bathroom at 44 Kinnerton Street where Prince Andrew and Virginia Roberts (now Virginia Giuffre) allegedly bonked in the tub. The image we shared (top) provided proof that the tub was of a standard size and not “too small for any kind of activity whatsoever,” as Ghislaine Maxwell had stated during a 2015 defamation civil case brought after Maxwell called Giuffre a liar. The case was settled in 2017 in favour of Virginia Giuffre and at that time Ghislaine Maxwell was forced to pay damages. The same bathroom photographed in 2024 (bottom). The flooring and fittings all remain; the tiles have been changed, as have the bath taps.
    In January 2022, ‘The Steeple Times’ was the first publication to share a photograph of the then unrenovated bathroom at 44 Kinnerton Street where Prince Andrew and Virginia Roberts (now Virginia Giuffre) allegedly bonked in the tub. The image we shared (top) provided proof that the tub was of a standard size and not “too small for any kind of activity whatsoever,” as Ghislaine Maxwell had stated during a 2015 defamation civil case brought after Maxwell called Giuffre a liar. The case was settled in 2017 in favour of Virginia Giuffre and at that time Ghislaine Maxwell was forced to pay damages. The same bathroom photographed in 2024 (bottom). The flooring and fittings all remain; the tiles have been changed, as have the bath taps.
    When asked about what occurred on the night of 10th March 2001 in the first-floor bathroom at her Kinnerton Street mews house, Ghislaine Maxwell responded: “[Virginia Roberts] then characterized [sic] things took place in my bathroom in the bathtub itself. The tub is too small for any kind of activity whatsoever.” The picture of that very same tub used in marketing material by Wellbelove Quested and more recently Chestertons proved exactly to the contrary.
    When asked about what occurred on the night of 10th March 2001 in the first-floor bathroom at her Kinnerton Street mews house, Ghislaine Maxwell responded: “[Virginia Roberts] then characterized [sic] things took place in my bathroom in the bathtub itself. The tub is too small for any kind of activity whatsoever.” The picture of that very same tub used in marketing material by Wellbelove Quested and more recently Chestertons proved exactly to the contrary.
    A floor plan shared by the likes ‘The Daily Mail’ and ‘The Sun suggested the first-floor bathroom at 44 Kinnerton Street to be 7-foot, 4 inches by 7-foot, 2-inches. Floor plans shared by Wellboved Quested suggested that the room is actually 8-foot, 4-inches by 8-foot, 2-inches. Either way, there was most definitely plenty of room for two (and whatever activities might have gone on between that particular two-some)…
    A floor plan shared by the likes ‘The Daily Mail’ and ‘The Sun suggested the first-floor bathroom at 44 Kinnerton Street to be 7-foot, 4 inches by 7-foot, 2-inches. Floor plans shared by Wellboved Quested suggested that the room is actually 8-foot, 4-inches by 8-foot, 2-inches. Either way, there was most definitely plenty of room for two (and whatever activities might have gone on between that particular two-some)…
    Then and Now – The ground floor reception room of the house (top) as it was in “doctor’s waiting room” style in January 2022 (top) and as it now is in December 2024 (bottom) opened up to the kitchen. Note that though a wall and fitted furnishings have been removed and the flooring replaced, the somewhat naff dining table and chairs remain.
    Then and Now – The ground floor reception room of the house (top) as it was in “doctor’s waiting room” style in January 2022 (top) and as it now is in December 2024 (bottom) opened up to the kitchen. Note that though a wall and fitted furnishings have been removed and the flooring replaced, the somewhat naff dining table and chairs remain.

    Laughably lauded by Chestertons as “charming” and “wonderfully bright,” the 1,477 square foot three-storey building has admittedly been knocked around a bit during the current ownership. Gone is a clapped-out kitchen that grubby groper Ghislaine likely never cooked her vegan nosh in and gone also is the wall between that room and the adjoining former “dentist’s waiting room-style” reception room where Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein’s London victims were likely lined-up for the vilest forms of sexual abuse. Also replaced are the fittings in the primary bathroom in what would have been the ‘Mucky Madam Master Suite’ on the top floor, but what is beyond bizarre is that the house’s most horrid bit of history survives for posterity virtually intact. The very same first floor full-sized bathroom where sexual relations allegedly occurred that caused Prince Andrew to allegedly pay £12 million to the aforementioned Virginia Roberts Giuffre (without any admission of guilt) remains virtually unaltered.

     

    In that very bathroom, next to the very landing where the ‘killer’ photograph of Miss Maxwell, Miss Roberts and the late Queen Elizabeth’s favourite son were so inconveniently snapped on 10th March 2001, the very same full-sized shower and the very same full-sized bathtub that The Steeple Times proved Ghislaine Maxwell lied about during her April 2016 deposition at the law offices of Boies Schiller & Flexner in New York in an article we published in January 2022 remains in-situ. Yes, the walls have been retiled and the taps have been changed, but every other element of the room’s grotty days of old remain as a kind of Miss Havisham-esque horror memorial.

     

    When asked during the videotaped and subsequently transcribed 2016 deposition, which was given before one Leslie Fagin, a court reporter and notary public in the State of New York, about the photograph and sexual activities in the first-floor bathroom, Maxwell went full ‘porky-pie’ about her ‘standard’ five-foot-six-inches length bathtub and snapped:

     

    “What I’m representing is that [Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s] entire ludicrous and absurd story of what took place in my house is an obvious lie… She claimed things took place in my bathroom in London. Her characterizations [sic] is just not possible… She then characterized things took place in my bathroom itself. The tub is too small for any type of activity whatsoever.”

     

    Clearly buyers are not flocking to purchase a pad of which Maxwell lied about and one of which Loyd Grossman might ask: “Who the hell would want to pay £3.45 million to live in a pugnacious pad like this?” In spite of spending less than a month on the market, Ghislaine Maxwell’s former lair – complete with its historical bonking bathtub – has just had its price slashed by a not-so-insubstantial £200,000 to ‘just’ £3.25 million.

     

    Editor’s note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party. Follow Matthew Steeples on Twitter at @M_Steeples and watch his shows on YouTube at @mjs2781/streams.

     

    A message from our editorial team – Thank you for reading this article. We’re more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus and the cost-of-living crisis impacts our advertisers. If you haven’t already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by supporting our work via Patreon.

     

    Then and Now – The somewhat decrepit kitchen, as it was in January 2022 (top), and as it now is, after being opened into the adjoining reception room (bottom) in December 2024.
    Then and Now – The somewhat decrepit kitchen, as it was in January 2022 (top), and as it now is, after being opened into the adjoining reception room (bottom) in December 2024.
    Then and Now – The ‘Mucky Madam Maxwell Suite’ at the top of the house as it was in January 2022 (top) and now is (bottom) in December 2024.
    Then and Now – The ‘Mucky Madam Maxwell Suite’ at the top of the house as it was in January 2022 (top) and now is (bottom) in December 2024.
    The house under renovation in July 2021 and November 2023.
    The house under renovation in July 2021 and November 2023.
    The curtains binned during the renovations were featured in a review by ‘The Guardian’ in November 2024 of a new exhibition that debuted at the Spike Island gallery in Bristol. Amongst the items shown in ‘Grey Unpleasant Land’ are a set of sun-bleached red velvet curtains. Of them, the paper’s Evan Moffitt observed: “Described as having been acquired from the 2020 clearance of 44 Kinnerton Street, Belgravia. A Google search will tell you that the house belonged to Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted associate of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. It’s understandable why the artists chose not to name her, though without the extra effort, the drapes are a mysterious stage prop. Throughout, the show poses questions about how objects accrue value and meaning, which often comes down to how much or how little they’re framed. Maxwell is very much the elephant in the room alongside items from the same class as the person she set up with underage girls.” One could instead argue that it is curtains for sanity in Britain when Ghislaine Maxwell’s stained curtains are considered worthy as “art exhibits.”
    The curtains binned during the renovations were featured in a review by ‘The Guardian’ in November 2024 of a new exhibition that debuted at the Spike Island gallery in Bristol. Amongst the items shown in ‘Grey Unpleasant Land’ are a set of sun-bleached red velvet curtains. Of them, the paper’s Evan Moffitt observed: “Described as having been acquired from the 2020 clearance of 44 Kinnerton Street, Belgravia. A Google search will tell you that the house belonged to Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted associate of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. It’s understandable why the artists chose not to name her, though without the extra effort, the drapes are a mysterious stage prop. Throughout, the show poses questions about how objects accrue value and meaning, which often comes down to how much or how little they’re framed. Maxwell is very much the elephant in the room alongside items from the same class as the person she set up with underage girls.” One could instead argue that it is curtains for sanity in Britain when Ghislaine Maxwell’s stained curtains are considered worthy as “art exhibits.”
    A floor plan of 44 Kinnerton Street prior to the renovations that came after the April 2021 sale.
    A floor plan of 44 Kinnerton Street prior to the renovations that came after the April 2021 sale.
    A floor plan of the house illustrating the changes to the ground floor layout.
    A floor plan of the house illustrating the changes to the ground floor layout.
    In July 2021, ‘The Steeple Times’ shared an image of an open door at 44 Kinnerton Street when the house was undergoing external repainting. The bannister pictured clearly is exactly the same one featured in the March 2001 image of Prince Andrew, Virginia Roberts and Ghislaine Maxwell on the first-floor landing of the property.
    In July 2021, ‘The Steeple Times’ shared an image of an open door at 44 Kinnerton Street when the house was undergoing external repainting. The bannister pictured clearly is exactly the same one featured in the March 2001 image of Prince Andrew, Virginia Roberts and Ghislaine Maxwell on the first-floor landing of the property.
    In 2019, Shaun Attwood of ‘Shaun Attwood’s True Crime Channel’ interviewed a lady who answered the door at 44 Kinnerton Street. In the footage he subsequently uploaded to YouTube, the bannister is again seen still in-situ.
    In 2019, Shaun Attwood of ‘Shaun Attwood’s True Crime Channel’ interviewed a lady who answered the door at 44 Kinnerton Street. In the footage he subsequently uploaded to YouTube, the bannister is again seen still in-situ.

    The Names & Numbers – ‘Mucky Madam Ghislaine Maxwell’s Bathtub Bonk Pad’ – 44 Kinnerton Street, Belgravia, London, SW1X 8ES, United Kingdom

    • Late December 2024 – £200,000 is slashed off the listing price of the property, taking the asking price to £3.25 million ($4.09 million, €3.92 million or درهم15 million), a sum 86% higher than the April 2021 selling price.

     

    • Early December 2024 – 44 Kinnerton Street is again listed for sale, this time by Chestertons. It is priced at £3.45 million ($4.34 million, €4.16 million or درهم15.94 million), a sum 97% higher than the April 2021 selling price, but is now available on a freehold instead of leasehold basis.

     

    • 18th November 2023 – The Sun’s Jane Matthews reported that 44 Kinnerton Street was “getting a major revamp” and was “covered in scaffolding.” Matthews suggested “the new owners” were thought to be a developer and quoted a management accountant named Wendy Howard, “who has worked on Kinnerton Street for ten years,” as saying: “I know [representatives of Maxwell] sold the property fairly quickly and for a discount. I’m surprised, it’s not really the type of house anyone would want to buy. It really has the wrong associations. Personally, I thought the whole situation was seedy and very disappointing… You do see some tourist groups going past, but it’s not very well known that Maxwell used to live around here. Sometimes you see people filming or making documentaries, so sometimes people ask about the house, but not too often.”

     

    • 19th October 2022 – The MailOnline’s Stewart Carter reported that “locals refuse to talk about the black spot on their street” in an article that also suggested the house “has not been lived in since Maxwell sold it… to pay her legal fees in 2021” and added: “It is collecting cobwebs and dust as locals grow increasingly frustrated about its eerie past.” Maxwell’s ‘friend’ – who was meant, but ultimately did not give in evidence in her trial, Kevin Moran, was referenced also. He stated: “It’s all investment – nobody lives here.”

     

    • 14th January 2022 – Property website TheMoveMarket.com values the house at £2.11 million ($2.88 million, €2.53 million or درهم9.75 million), a sum 19% lower than the current asking price for the unrenovated property.

     

    • January 2022 – Estate agents Wellbelove Quested offer the mews house for £2.6 million ($3.6 million, €3.1 million or درهم1 million), an extraordinary increase of 49% on the sale price just 270 days earlier. The house is offered on a lease of 127 years that commenced on 24th June 2014 and previously on their website Wellbelove Quested had marketed the house for a higher price of £2.75 million ($3.738 million, €3.283 million or درهم13.731 million).

     

    • July 2021 – The Steeple Times reports on repainting work to the outside of the house being underway. An open door reveals the infamous staircase bannister to still be in-situ.

     

    • 19th April 2021 – Records confirm the house to have been sold for £1.75 million ($2.39 million, €2.09 million or درهم79 million). Details about the beneficiary of the sum from this sale are not publicly available.

     

    • March 2021 – Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyer offered cash from the “pending sale of her £1.45 million ($2 million, €1.74 million or درهم28 million)” home as part of a package when they sought bail for the mucky madam for a third time, the Daily Mail reported. This sum was 44% lower than the September 2020 asking price and 400% higher than the January 1997 purchase price.

     

    • March 2021 – A Knightsbridge estate agent told The Steeple Times: “Knowing the street as I do, 44 is one of the smaller houses which I assume it to be a little over 1,000 square foot in size. Depending on the condition, I estimate the freehold value to be circa £1.8 million to £2 million ($2.5 million to $2.7 million, €2.2 million to €2.4 million or 9درهم million to درهم10 million).”

     

    • December 2020 – Members of the Maxwell family attempted to raise finance on the property but are not successful, The Steeple Times learns from a financier with connections to the Maxwell family and their representatives. They were rejected on the basis of the “toxicity” of their familial name.

     

    • September 2020 – Estate agents Aylesford list 44 Kinnerton Street for sale for £2.6 million ($3.6 million, €3.1 million or درهم1 million) on (it was claimed) a freehold basis, a sum 797% than the January 1997 purchase price. They subsequently later reduce the asking price to £2.1 million ($2.9 million, €2.5 million or درهم10.5 million) “according to a leading property expert.”

     

    • August 2019 – According to Insider, a woman with “long hair [who] appeared to be in her 60s” was seen entering the property. She “denied that the socialite owns or lived in the house, claiming instead that the elusive socialite lived elsewhere down the street.”

     

    • 10th March 2001 – Prince Andrew allegedly had sexual relations with 17-year-old Virginia Roberts in a bathroom in the property. He continues to deny this occurred whilst claiming that a photograph of himself with Miss Roberts and Ghislaine Maxwell on the first floor of building is a fake also.

     

    • 22nd January 1997 – Ghislaine Maxwell paid £290,000 ($396,000, €347,000 or درهم5 million) for the three-storey leasehold mews house. It is situated at the heart of the Duke of Westminster’s Grosvenor Estate.

     

    • 1989 to 1995 – Ghislaine Maxwell is known to have resided at 69 Stanhope Mews East, South Kensington, London, SW7 5QT. Her father bought it for her two years before his mysterious death and she reportedly “groomed and befriended Minor Victim 3 in London, England, between approximately 1994 and 1995… Maxwell introduced Minor Victim 3 to Epstein and during those interactions, Maxwell encouraged Minor Victim 3 to massage Epstein, knowing that Epstein would engage in sex acts with Minor Victim 3. During those massages, Epstein sexually abused Minor Victim 3” at that very property. It was sold for £267,000 ($365,000, €320,000 or درهم3 million) on 15th March 1995 and then again for £1.75 million ($2.39 million, €2.10 million or درهم8.77 million) on 30th August 2019.

     

    Further images of the house (as presented in December 2024) illustrate internal redecoration has occurred, but that not much has been done with the external roof terrace…

    Second bedroom 2024
    Master bedroom 2024 1
    Master bathroom 2024
    Roof terrace 2024

    THAT 2001 Photo STILL NOT PROVEN A FAKE – The 10th March 2001 photograph of Prince Andrew, Virginia Roberts and Ghislaine Maxwell at 44 Kinnerton Street, Belgravia

    10th March 2001 44 Kinnerton Street Ghislaine Maxwell Virginia Roberts Prince Andrew

    The photograph, taken supposedly by Jeffrey Epstein on the first-floor landing at 44 Kinnerton Street, Belgravia, London, SW1X 8ES, United Kingdom, has been shared by the world’s media in hundreds of thousands of articles and analysed countless times by countless experts.

     

    In November 2019, the Daily Mail’s Inderdeep Bains called it: “The photograph that WON’T go away” and it, as of date, has NEVER been discredited. Amongst evidence suggesting it to be perfectly real is that:

     

    • The setting of the photograph has been confirmed as genuine by the Maxwell family. Of it, in March 2021, Ian Maxwell told Radio 4’s Today programme: “I do recognise that setting.”
    • The window in the picture has the same features as the front first floor windows of 44 Kinnerton Street.
    • The width of the first floor landing is accurate to the measurements shown in the floor plan of the sales brochure prepared on the 14th October 2021 by estate agents Wellbelove Quested.
    • Though he claimed to be “at a loss to explain this particular photograph” during the 2019 BBC interview, the Duke of York has admitted to having visited 44 Kinnerton Street. He stated: “I don’t think I think ever went upstairs… The dining room and everything was on the ground floor.” Contradicting the royal, sources have claimed that the room behind him, Roberts and Maxwell in the photograph was used as a sitting room.
    • The heights of all three individuals in the picture look to be accurate proportionately.
    • Prince Andrew’s “chubby fingers” are clear to see. The Queen’s second son’s fingers are clearly “chubby fingers” and these very same “chubby fingers” have been seen hundreds of thousands of times in hundreds of thousands of other photographs.
    • Prince Andrew has claimed he only ever goes out in London in a suit and tie. Images of him in open necked shirts in the capital – including one of him leaving the nightclub Chinawhite – prove to the contrary.
    • Prince Andrew has claimed he does not “do” hugs and and embraces in photographs. Images of him taken in St Tropez embracing the US socialite Chris Von Aspen in July 2007 suggest the alleged non-sweater is wrong also on that score.
    • The outfit worn by Virginia Roberts – a woman who has already received financial settlements from Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell – has been seen on her in photographs of her at Naomi Campbell’s 2001 birthday party in France. In spite of some suggestions that a lady only wears an outfit once, we counter that a lady in Miss Roberts’ unfortunate situation would be forced to wear what she was told appealed to those in control of her wished her to wear.
    • Matthew Steeples of The Steeple Times and Shaun Attwood of Shaun Attwood’s True Crime Channel have both seen inside 44 Kinnerton Street and the stair rail shown in the photo remains in place and is thus genuine to the setting. Attwood subsequently released film footage of this on his YouTube channel and The Steeple Times shared its most recent image of the open front door with the stair rail beyond in July 2021.
    • Many experts have repeatedly stated photo manipulation was in its infancy at the time that this image first surfaced.
    • The FBI have never questioned the authenticity of the image.

     

    The TRUE FAKE PHOTO – The August 2019 photograph of Ghislaine Maxwell at an In-N-Out Burger restaurant

    Ghislaine-Maxwell-In-N-Out-Burger-fake-photo

    It must be remembered that the now convicted mucky madam sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell was likely involved in leaking that infamous “too perfect” photoshopped image of herself at an In-N-Out Burger restaurant in Los Angeles in August 2019. Aside from this wicked woman – whom bangs on about being vegan constantly now – “planting herself for a double-double” burger, that image was subsequently debunked by The Cut. For them, Bridget Read stated:

     

    “The intrepid Daily Mail checked out the location of the burger joint in Hollywood where Maxwell was allegedly spotted by a regular last week and found some odd discrepancies. Notably, a bus stop in the background of the shot shows an advertisement for the movie Good Boys – which the company that operates the ad space said has never been there. The bus stop currently displays an ad for a local hospital, which it says has been there since July 28. Maxwell was supposedly photographed at the In-N-Out on August 12.”

     

    “Questions about Maxwell’s lunch outing have fed into the already robust set of conspiracy theories around Epstein, his high-profile acquaintances, and his death. Why was a second smartphone on the In-N-Out table? Why did Maxwell never stick a straw in either her soda or her shake? Why did the diner who supposedly photographed her have such a nice camera, with a lens that took a very clear photo? It doesn’t help that the In-N-Out employees at that location have been forbidden, supposedly by their employer, to talk about Maxwell’s visit.”

     

    “If [family friend and attorney Leah] Saffian did indeed leak the photo of Maxwell, it was likely to try and throw the FBI off her scent… If the In-N-Out photo is indeed doctored, Maxwell could be anywhere and could show up anywhere she pleases. What’s next? Some predictions: eating a hot dog on the steps of the Met, posing with a cactus at Joshua Tree, riding a unicycle at Burning Man, or painting her nails on the C train.”

     

  • An Airhead’s Tardis – Hidden House In Knightsbridge Once Home To Donna Air For Sale For £14.5 Million

    An Airhead’s Tardis – Hidden House In Knightsbridge Once Home To Donna Air For Sale For £14.5 Million

    Tardis-like hidden house in Knightsbridge once home to ‘airhead’ Donna Air – who once amusingly asked The Corrs: “Where did you all meet?” – for sale for £14.5 million (or 383% more than it was ‘worth’ in 2003)

    Update, Thursday 4th April 2024 – Internal images removed at insistence of Annabel Edney, associate PR, Savills.

     

    The ‘cheap wing’ of one of Knightsbridge’s landmark churches, St Saviour’s, has gone on sale for a not-insubstantial sum of £14.5 million after the more ‘expensive wing’ was marketed for the very punchy sum of £55 million in 2019 and the still somewhat punchy sum of £44 million in 2020.

     

    The deceptively Tardis-like Hastings House in Walton Street is a ‘blink-and-you’ll-miss-it’ home from the pavement. It is entered through a small door to the side of a church that was reduced in size to accommodate the vast 12,102 square foot St Saviour’s House and the new-build in 1999 property of 5,261 square foot now offered by agents Savills.

     

    Actress and presenter Donna Air – who once hilariously asked the siblings that formed The Corrs: “Where did you all meet?” during an interview – numbers amongst the well-known ‘names’ to have lived in the house. This likeable lady shared the property with her wealthy conservationist then partner Damian Aspinall and even operated her even more hilariously named company (since dissolved) Airhead And Money Limited from the address.

     

    Occupied also variously by a fast-living, Bugatti driving oil trader named Pierre Andurand and the controversial Italian sports manager Pierandrea Semeraro, the three-storey residence is centred around a “serene” private courtyard and includes 2 reception rooms, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and a rather impressive roof terrace.

     

    Savills describe the freehold house as “opulent” and laud “one of the crowning jewels of the residence,” its underground pool, as a “hidden gem” in the basement; perhaps Sharon Corr and her siblings could hold a reunion there.

     

    Editor’s note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party. Follow Matthew Steeples on Twitter at @M_Steeples and watch his current nightly show on YouTube at 8.30pm daily.

     

    A message from our editorial team – Thank you for reading this article. We’re more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus and the cost-of-living crisis impacts our advertisers. If you haven’t already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by supporting our work via Patreon.

     

    James Middleton Donna Air Victoria Fisher Damian Aspinall
    Actress and presenter Donna Air and conservationist Damian Aspinall with James Middleton – Air’s partner between 2013 and 2018 – and Victoria Fisher – whom Aspinall married in 2016. Aspinall and Air were an item between 2000 and 2007. Donna Air’s most famous moment on the telly box was summed up in an interview with Sharon Corr of the Celtic pop band The Corrs. Of the encounter, Corr stated: “We did a live television interview with Donna Air. Her opening question was: ‘So, where did you all meet?’ I looked at my brother and sisters and our hearts sank. If that was the opening question, it could only go downhill from there. It was clear that she knew absolutely nothing about us.”
    Pierre Andurand and Pierandrea Smeraro
    Oil trading tycoon Pierre Andurand and sports tycoon Pierandrea Semeraro have also both been listed at the address in Companies House records. How long each of the men lived at the property is unknown.

    The Names & Numbers – Hastings House, Walton Place, Knightsbridge, London, SW3 1SA, United Kingdom

    March 2024 – Offered for sale as an “ultra-cool freehold house” by William Duckworth-Chad and Alex Christian of Savills for £14.5 million ($18.3 million, €17 million or درهم67.2 million) – an asking price 123% higher than the asking price 20 years ago in March 2004 and 383% higher than the quoted worth in May 2003 – and described by Robb Report’s Abigail Montanez as a “stately London home hiding in plain sight… in the affluent Knightsbridge neighbourhood.”

     

    April 2012 – Richard Compton Miller for The Standard bizarrely contradicts previous evidence and suggests Damian Aspinall and Donna Air “recently moved into [the] converted church.” It can only be assumed he was regurgitating somewhat outdated parish news.

     

    April 2010 – Listed as the address of French “entrepreneur” Pierre Andurand on his appointment as a director of Andurand Events Limited company. The company ultimately was dissolved on 28th June 2011 after a compulsory strike-off.

     

    Aixe-en-Provence born Mr Andurand is listed on Wikipedia as a “businessman and hedge fund manager” who was educated at the University of Oxford. This twice married “leader” of Andurand Capital has variously been listed as a “star trader,” an “oil trading wildcard” and someone who operates with “no set risk limits.” World Top Investors list this kickboxing enthusiast as “the comeback kid, the hotshot trader living the jock-bro dream, driving a Bugatti supercar, a Knightsbridge townhouse, and a trophy wife Russian model.”

     

    23rd January 2007 – A planning application submitted by the Italian sports manager Pierandrea Semeraro concerning the property is approved.

     

    Mr Semeraro is listed on Wikipedia as having been the president of the Sports Union Lecce from 2006 to 2010. He was subsequently banned and disqualified after an investigation into a football betting scandal.

     

    November 2006 – Planning application submitted to make various alterations to Hastings House by a firm named Stanhope Gate including the addition of skylights.

     

    April 2004 – Described by the Daily Mail’s Adam Helliker as being the “weekday… converted church” home where “daughter of a bus mechanic from Newcastle” who “has, by all accounts, rather taken to the life of luxury” Donna Air “busies herself with acting lessons, acupuncture, shiatsu and stints with her personal trainer.”

     

    March 2004 – Featured once again by The Observer’s Ben Flanagan after going on sale for the far higher than he’d previously mentioned sum of £6.5 million ($8.2 million, €7.6 million or درهم30.1 million) through the rather ritzy realtors Aylesford.

     

    Of it, Flanagan enthused:

     

    “Behind a discreet doorway on an exclusive Knightsbridge street lies this 5,250 sq ft home, which the estate agent describes as ‘one of London’s hidden gems.’”

     

    “You’d never guess the house was built in the 1990s as you wander through its elegant Italianate central courtyard to the neo-classical cloisters and drawing room. One clue, however, is the basement swimming pool and bar, which has a more modern – if a little Footballers’ Wives – look… ‘There’s an amazing ‘party pad’ feel to it,’ says a spokesman.”

     

    May 2003 – Described by The Observer’s Ben Flanagan as worth £3 million ($3.8 million, €3.5 million or درهم13.9 million) in a feature that mentions it being the home of actress Donna Air and zoo owning tycoon Damian Aspinall.

     

    28th July 2000 – Listed as the correspondence address of “presenter” Donna Air’s amusingly named “radio and television activities” company, Airhead And Money Limited. The company ultimately was dissolved on 1st March 2011 after a compulsory strike-off.

     

    1999 – Completion of Hastings House and St Saviour’s House by developers The Raven Group Limited.

     

    4th September 1998 – Full planning permission granted for the construction of Hastings House by the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea. Of the planning history of the unlisted property then to be constructed, the council noted separately: “The subject site was formerly included within the ground of the St Saviour’s Church, which is a listed building, however following planning permission which was granted in August 1997 for the erection of the subject building, the subject site has been formally renumbered in 2001 as Hastings House and is considered as a separate planning unit to St Saviours Church.”

     

  • Knockdown Paedo Islands – Jeffrey Epstein’s Islands Sold For Bargain Basement Price

    Knockdown Paedo Islands – Jeffrey Epstein’s Islands Sold For Bargain Basement Price

    As Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Paedo Islands’ sell for a knockdown price of £48 million against a £95 million asking price, we ask: “Who’d want to go and stay in the ‘luxury resort’ planned there?”

    In March 2022, The Steeple Times asked: “Who on earth would want to live in a place where such hellish abuse occurred?” of the islands owned by the croaked paedophile Ponzi schemer Jeffrey Epstein.

     

    Purchased in recent days by billionaire Stephen Deckoff via an investment vehicle named SD Investments LLC for a combined total of just £47.7 million, the plan for the islands where countless young girls and likely countless young boys also too were so horrifically abused is to turn it into a “state-of-the-art, five-star, world-class luxury 25-room resort” supposedly.

     

    Though clearly sold at a clear knockdown price, the figure achieved for Little St James and Great St James was “the highest-priced trade in the history of the U.S. Virgin Islands.” Though “a significant portion of the sale proceeds” will be “paid to the government of the Virgin Islands per a settlement between the government and Epstein’s estate” according to a report this morning in The Washington Post, some of the proceeds will no doubt end up in the hands of the Ponzi scheming monster’s brother, Mark Epstein – whose bizarre nickname is ‘Puggy.’

     

    Mr Deckoff himself has had an illustrious career and is listed by Forbes as having a “real time net worth” of £2.4 billion. He co-founded Black Diamond Capital Management in 1995 and is a resident of the U.S. Virgin Islands. He “also owns multi-million dollar properties in Colorado and New York City, and a Beverly Hills mansion previously owned by the Latsis shipping family.”

     

    This morning on Twitter, I asked: “When billionaire Steven Deckoff completes the transformation of Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Paedo Islands’ into a ‘luxury resort’ would you be tempted to visit?” By 11:30am, just 8.7% of respondents answered: “Yes; great re-use.” Mr Deckoff may thus find himself struggle to attract paying guests.

     

    Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party. Follow Matthew Steeples on Twitter at @M_Steeples.

     

    Pictured Top (left to right) – Jeffrey Epstein with one of his ‘victims’, the main compound currently on Little Saint James and its new owner, Stephen Deckoff.

     

    This morning on Twitter, Matthew Steeples asked: “When billionaire Steven Deckoff completes the transformation of Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Paedo Islands’ into a “luxury resort” would you be tempted to visit?” By 11:30am on Thursday 4th May 2023, the very clear majority of responses were: “No; inappropriate.”

    The Names & Numbers – ‘The Jameses’ (Great Saint James and Little Saint James islands), United States Virgin Islands (USVI)

    May 2023 – Sold to billionaire Stephen Deckoff via an investment vehicle, SD Investments LLC for a combined total of just £47.7 million ($60 million, €54.3 million or درهم220.4 million), a sum 50% lower than the initial asking price.

     

    March 2022 – Listed for sale through Bespoke Real Estate for £94.5 million ($125 million, €113.8 million or درهم459.1 million) with “subdivision capabilities.” Listed as “two exceptional private Caribbean islands with 230 acres, 6 beaches and 5.8 miles of coastline.”

     

    Media reports have previously estimated the islands to be worth a combined sum of £181.8 million ($240 million, €218.4 million or درهم881.4 million), a figure 92% higher than the current listing price and 178% higher than the July 2019 valuation.

     

    10th August 2019 – Jeffrey Epstein dies by supposed suicide in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in New York. He had previously supposedly attempted suicide on 23rd July 2019 whilst sharing a cell with alleged quadruple killer cop Nicholas Tartaglione.

     

    July 2019 – Forbes reports Little St. James to have been valued at £48.4 million ($63.9 million, €58.2 million or درهم234.7 million) and Great St. James at £17 million ($22.5 million, €20.5 million or درهم82.6 million) – or a total sum of £65.5 million ($86.4 million, €78.7 million or درهم317.3 million) – in documents filed by Epstein’s legal team when he applied for bail.

     

    6th July 2019 – Jeffrey Epstein is arrested after his private jet lands at Teterboro Airport, New Jersey.

     

    April 2016 – Epstein begins to clear Great St. James without seeking permission and is fined by the Virgin Islands Department of Planning and Natural Resources (DNPR). Court cases have continued about this matter beyond the paedophile’s death.

     

    January 2016 – Epstein purchases the 161.3-acre Great St. James for a total sum of £17 million ($22.5 million, €20.5 million or درهم82.6 million) through various shell companies and with the help of Dubai businessman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem as a “beneficial owner” as the then owner, a Danish politician named Christian Kjær, had been “begged” not to sell to the paedophile due to rumours about his “sexual preferences.”

     

    According to the BBC, Epstein “had drawn up plans to develop the 161-acre island by building homes, an amphitheatre, as well as an underwater office and pool.”

     

    2007 onwards – According to the Independent, “Epstein began a massive programme of building and remodelling that drew suspicion from local officials. His main compound nearly doubled in size, sprouting into a plush mansion with an outside terrace connecting the master bedroom and the swimming pool, along with a desalination system.”

     

    “Satellite photos show a sprawling network of terraces, cottages, beach houses, swimming pools, docks, utility buildings, a helipad, a tennis court, slipways, some kind of enclosed lake or lagoon, and various huts of unknown purpose, all connected by palm-lined roads where golf buggies ferried guests from place to place (a journey across the island reportedly took about five minutes).”

     

    1998 – Epstein purchases the 7.16-acre Little St. James for £6.02 million ($7.95 million, €7.24 million or درهم29.20 million) through a shell company named L. S. J. LLC. It had been marketed for sale for £8 million ($10.5 million, €9.6 million or درهم38.6 million) on behalf of a venture capitalist named Arch Cummin.

     

    Some of the ‘Famous Faces’ who’ve visited the ‘Paedo Islands’

    • Royal rotter Prince Andrew. Alleged to have flown to the islands on 4 occasions and is alleged to have had sexual relations with the then underaged in the territory Virginia Roberts there.
    • Now croaked paedophile and cocaine addict Jean-Luc Brunel. Known to have supplied three 12-year-old sisters to Epstein and visited him in jail at least 70 times during his 2008 incarceration. Known to have visited the ‘Paedo Islands’ on multiple occasions.
    • Temperamental supermodel Naomi Campbell.
    • Prone to tell porky pies politician President Bill Clinton was reportedly a visitor according to Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Hillary Clinton’s husband has denied this however.
    • Magician David Copperfield – who reportedly proposed to supermodel Claudia Schiffer there.
    • Socialite Clementine ‘Clemmie’ Hambro. Known to have visited in 1999.
    • Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. Known to have visited in March 2006.
    • American-Canadian theoretical physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss. Known to have been amongst a group of 21 physicists invited to Little St. James for a meeting about gravity. Of Epstein, the scientist later remarked: “As a scientist I always judge things on empirical evidence and he always has women ages 19 to 23 around him, but I’ve never seen anything else, so as a scientist, my presumption is that whatever the problems were I would believe him over other people… I don’t feel tarnished in any way by my relationship with Jeffrey; I feel raised by it.”
    • Labour spin doctor and associate of Putin cronies Lord Mandelson and his partner Reinaldo Avila da Silva. Known to have visited on several occasions – including when his host was not present – between 2000 and 2005.
    • Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. Known to have visited the islands on many occasions from when Epstein purchased them until his death in 2019.
    • Disgraced actor Kevin Spacey.
    • Now former CEO of Barclays Jes Staley. Known to have visited Little St. James in 2015 with his wife and to have taken their 90-foot yacht, Bequia, there also.
    • Comedian and actor Chris Tucker.
    • Billionaire businessman and L Brands founder Leslie Wexner. Known to have visited in 1998 “with several Victoria’s Secret models in tow.”

     

    Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Temple’

    The gruesome paedophile Jeffrey Epstein built a structure described by many as a “temple” between 2009 and 2013. It is unclear what the structure was actually used for, but it certainly sent conspiracy theorists crazy.

     

    The building was said to have “acoustic walls” and a “door to prevent people from leaving” complete with a “medieval era lock.” Its base was painted with broad, vivid horizontal stripes and for a time it featured a gold dome atop.

     

    Statues including one of the trident-wielding Poseidon, the Greek God of the sea, and birds “perched” on its corners and aside was a terrace with a labyrinth motif.

     

    Insider suggested “it strongly resembles a temple, though of which sort remains elusive.”

     

    The gold dome supposedly “flew off” during the “deadly 2017 hurricane season.”

     

    Epstein-temple-2
    Epstein’s bizarre ‘temple’ will hopefully now be razed to the ground.
    Jeffrey-Epstein-working-blonde-victim
    Epstein, pictured here with a woman he no doubt abused, had a ten-person shower installed in his main compound and made it his primary base from 2017 onwards.
    Jeffrey-Epstein-hiking
    The sexual deviant liked to take his many, many victims on hikes across his islands. Goodness knows what he did to them during these misadventures.
    Ghislaine-Maxwell-Jean-Luc-Brunel
    Fellow paedophiles Ghislaine Maxwell and Jean-Luc Brunel in the very same space where their host was primarily photographed.
    Jean-Luc-Brunel-Israel-Little-Saint-James
    Bizarrely the since supposed died by ‘suicide’ Jean-Luc Brunel was pictured in the same space wearing a baseball cap with the caption ‘Israel Army.’
    Debbie-Staley-Jes-Staley
    Other visitors to the islands included the since himself disgraced CEO of Barclays Jes Staley and his beady-eyed wife Debbie.
    Jeffrey-Epstein-Prince-Andrew-Duke-of-York
    Prince Andrew, whose feckless wife happily took loans and assistance from Jeffrey Epstein, was a regular on Little Saint James.
    Stephen-Hawking
    Stephen Hawking was amongst a group to visit in March 2006 for a conference about gravity.
    Jeffrey-Epstein-and-victim-on-island
    This image shows the evil ‘head of the municipality’ in a dressing gown on Little St. James with one of his victims. It is telling in that both look like they know that something truly appalling has happened.
    Ghislaine-Maxwell-and-Jean-Luc-Brunel-on-island
    Clearly Ghislaine Maxwell liked the covered porch just as much as her ‘boss’ turned lover. Pictured here with fellow paedophile Jean-Luc Brunel munching on some nosh, the deviant daughter of the pension pot plunderer sits at the very desk where her evil cohort controlled his wicked operation.
    Little-Saint-James-terrace
    That infamous terrace in marketing material created by Bespoke Real Estate. Note that some of the original furniture has been replaced.
    Epstein-island-abuse
    The Ponzi scheming associate of Robert Maxwell reveled in luring young girls to his islands as once there, they could not escape him and his abusing cohorts.

    Further images of Great Saint James and Little Saint James

  • What Has Become Of Tuckedaway? Ghislaine Maxwell ‘Hideout Lair’ Hits The News Once Again…

    What Has Become Of Tuckedaway? Ghislaine Maxwell ‘Hideout Lair’ Hits The News Once Again…

    As it is revealed that a lawyer connected to Obama and Biden is also connected with Ghislaine Maxwell’s ‘hideout lair,’ Matthew Steeples asks: “What has become of Tuckedaway?”

    Granite Reality LLC – a supposed reference to New Hampshire’s ‘Granite State’ nickname – was the vehicle used by the mucky madam Ghislaine Maxwell and her then husband and fellow submarine pilot Scott Borgerson to purchase what became her hideout ‘lair’ in December 2019.

     

    The ironically named ‘Tuckedaway,’ situated deep in the forests of Bradford, New Hampshire, returned to the news yesterday when featured in an article in National File – a “new media firm founded in 2019” that claims to have “broken major stories over its brief history including Ashley Biden’s diary, the Cal Cunningham affair, the alleged Ukrainian pay-for-play scam run by Nancy Pelosi’s son, to name a few.”

     

    Headlined “Obama-Biden Administration Linked To Ghislaine Maxwell’s Hideout House Where She Got Arrested” and written by Patrick Howley – whom ambitiously claims to have also “exposed Ralph Northam’s racist yearbook photos, Cal Cunningham’s extramarital affair, the VA scandal, and broke other groundbreaking articles that have permanently altered the United States’ political landscape” – the article stated:

     

    “A top Obama-Biden administration banking official employs and works with the man who set up the anonymous ‘LLC’ company that owned the house where Ghislaine Maxwell was hiding in New Hampshire when she was arrested by the FBI, according to records obtained by National File. How did Ghislaine Maxwell manage to lay low prior to her arrest in a house that was known as ‘Tuckedaway’? The paper trail leads to the doorstep of power.”

     

    “Jeffrey Roberts was the listed manager of Granite Reality LLC, which mysteriously bought Ghislaine Maxwell’s house in Bradford, New Hampshire in cash. The LLC was formed the month before it bought the house for over $1 million. Thus, Jeffrey Roberts’ LLC owned the house where Ghislaine Maxwell got arrested, and Jeffrey Roberts has worked directly for an Obama-Biden official. Jeffrey Roberts was replaced at Granite Reality LLC after Maxwell’s arrest in 2020.”

     

    “Jeffrey Roberts is a lawyer at the Boston law firm Nutter McLennen & Fish, which was led for many years by Thomas J. Curry, who served as a top official in the Barack Obama administration.”

     

    “Thomas J. Curry was nominated in 2012 by Barack Obama to be Comptroller of the Currency, a Treasury Department office that manages U.S. federal banking. He was confirmed by the Senate and served in this important role until he was replaced in early 2017 in the early period of President Trump’s administration.”

     

    “Thomas J. Curry is a retired partner at the Boston law firm Nutter McLennen & Fish. He served – or currently still serves – on the firm’s COVID-19 task force with Jeffrey Roberts, who is on the Executive Committee for the firm and who is the chairman of the firm’s Private Client Department. The firm’s website shows that both Curry and Jeffrey Roberts are listed on the Task Force.”

     

    “Thomas J. Curry, identified as a Nutter partner, and two Nutter associates wrote an article for Banker & Tradesman in February 2021 discussing the Joe Biden administration’s new hires and how they were expected to push for financial regulation.”

     

    “Why did Ghislaine Maxwell involve a lawyer from the Nutter firm to get her hideaway house and to keep her location secret?”

     

    “The Maxwell family is integrally involved in geopolitics. Ghislaine Maxwell’s father Robert Maxwell was reportedly a spy for the nation of Israel.”

     

    “As National File reported, at least two of Ghislaine Maxwell’s nephews worked for the Obama-Biden administration including a nephew at Hillary Clinton’s State Department and a nephew in the Obama-Biden White House. Ghislaine Maxwell’s associate accused human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, broke into the globalist establishment in the 1970’s managing money at Bear Stearns for Edgar Bronfman, the father of heiresses Clare and Sara Bronfman, who oversaw the NXIVM human trafficking cult.”

     

    “Sara Bronfman almost became the First Lady of Libya after Hillary Clinton’s overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, while Ghislaine Maxwell’s nephew worked on the Libya issue for Hillary Clinton in her Benghazi-tainted term at the State Department. Jeffrey Epstein worked for the nation of Israel, according to former Israeli intelligence official Ari Ben-Menashe and confirmed by Rolling Stone magazine.”

     

    “…Hunter Biden was instrumental in funding and assisting a company responsible for Ukraine biolabs. The Metabiota company, headed by a Ghislaine Maxwell partner named Nathan Wolfe, was in charge of setting up biolabs in Ukraine. The biolabs have sparked concern that dangerous materials could be used to fuel bioterrorism in Ukraine and around the world.”

     

    “… The company Metabiota was founded by San Francisco-based virologist Nathan Wolfe, according to Wolfe’s LinkedIn page. Until recently, Nathan Wolfe served as Metabiota’s chairman and chief executive officer. The so-called ‘virus hunter’ Nathan Wolfe actually announced the TerraMar Project, a project that was reportedly Ghislaine Maxwell’s idea, and thus Nathan Wolfe was partnering with Ghislaine Maxwell on the project from the start, records reveal. The project was supposedly about saving the oceans, though the oceans were littered with over a billion Coronavirus facemasks in the year 2020 alone during the Scamdemic that the globalists pushed. The Huffington Post gave Ghislaine Maxwell a glowing profile about the project in 2014.”

     

    In June 2022, The Steeple Times contacted Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty – who sold the then Mr and Mrs Borgerson ‘Tuckedaway’ in December 2019 to enquire of the then status of the 156-acre estate. Greg Gangalis of the firm responded: “Thank you for your inquiry. We have no information on this property and unfortunately have no contact information for the owner. Sorry we could not be of more help.”

     

    Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party. Follow Matthew Steeples on Twitter at @M_Steeples.

     

    Pictured Top – The entrance sign at the property (left); Scott Borgerson with Ghislaine Maxwell and two others (top right) and the main residence on the New Hampshire estate.

     

    Granite Reality LLC, which ‘owns’ he house where Ghislaine Maxwell hid out, is most curiously connected to the very same woman, Leah Saffian, who allegedly helped her fake the In-N-Out burger photo which was used to distract and suggest the noxious nonce was in California whilst ‘on-the-run’ in the summer of 2020.
    Ghislaine-Maxwell-Scott-Borgerson
    In happier times… The now former Mr and Mrs Scott Borgerson seemed like they were destined for a life of luxury and lavishness back when they met in 2015. Little did Mr Borgerson know what he was in for, or, did he plan it all along? Did he know what was coming and did he, like his fellow submarine pilot, have deviousness on the brain? They say that the “truth is stranger than fiction” and in the case of a couple who hid their union even from Ghislaine Maxwell’s siblings until she was arrested, something most definitely stinks to high heaven.
    Scott-Borgerson-Kris-McGinn
    He’s definitely moved on… Scott Borgerson clearly doesn’t miss his old ‘missus’ Ghislaine. Though he clearly was never proud enough to be open with anyone (and nor was she) during their union – they married in either late 2015 or early 2016, depending on which source you might take as gospel – he’s now living it up with a sexually saucy “yoga enthusiast” with an “ass that could crack open a walnut” named Kris McGinn. On Instagram, she describes herself to her 149 followers as a “writer” and though she’s not posted since 19th October 2021, she previously bizarrely mused about ravens in October 2020. At that time, she quoted a bit of Edgar Allan Poe – “But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling” – and stated: “Loved learning more about these marvelous creatures with Jim Benhke for this week’s Cricket.” Clearly, whilst she then got to “smile” when Ghislaine Maxwell got sent down on 29th December 2021, all the mucky madam got instead was an errant husband who, it seems, has managed to leave her with plenty of ‘wonga wonga.’
    The-Phippen-Smith-House
    Another former Maxwell-Borgerson pad, The Phippen-Smith House (AKA ‘Tidewood’), 301 Summer Street, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Cape Ann, Essex County, Massachusetts, MA 01944, United States of America remains for sale at a reduced price of £5.42 million ($6.75 million, €6.11 million or درهم24.79 million). The property was initially offered for £6.52 million ($6.95 million, €7.28 million or درهم25.52 million). The 6,113 square foot crib was purchased by a limited liability company controlled by Ghislaine Maxwell’s then “secret husband” Scott Borgerson for £2.294 million ($2.450 million, €2.564 million or درهم8.998 million) on 30th June 2016. During the transaction, decidedly deviant Ghislaine Maxwell is said to have used the pseudonym ‘Jennifer Ellmax.’

    The Names & Numbers – Tuckedaway, 338 East Washington Road, Bradford, New Hampshire, NH 03221, United States of America

    27th April 2022 – Realty website Redfin estimated value of £1.284 million ($1.601 million, €1.449 million or درهم5.880 million) listed for the property – which they reference as extending to 4,365 square foot and as including 4 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.

     

    Elsewhere, OpenCorporates list Granite Reality LLC (company number 831395) as being of a status of “not in good standing” and its registered address as 11420 Santa Monica Boulevard, #25424, Los Angeles, CA, 90025, United States of America. The firm’s “inactive director” is named as Leah Saffian – a close associate of Ghislaine Maxwell – and cites Jeffrey W. Roberts as having been removed as an officer on 8th February 2021.

     

    24th June 2022 – Greg Gagalis, a regional manager at Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty’s Bedford, New Hampshire office, told The Steeple Times: “We have no information on this property and unfortunately have no contact information for the owner. Sorry we could not be of more help.”

     

    2nd July 2020 – Ghislaine Maxwell is arrested at Tuckedaway.

     

    In the weeks after her arrest, as she unsurprisingly unsuccessfully sought bail, Maxwell claimed via her lawyers that the “majority of her assets” had been transferred into a “trust controlled by her husband and another unnamed party.”

     

    In documents submitted to the courts, they put her their worth at £17.1 million ($22.5 million, €20.5 million or درهم82.6 million) and suggested: “For Ms Maxwell to flee, she would have to abandon her spouse. She will not isk destroying the lives and financial well-being of those she holds most dear to live as a fugitive during a worldwide pandemic.”

     

    Going further, they added: “In fact, every action Ms Maxwell has taken from the time of Epstein’s arrest up to the time of the first bail hearing was designed to protect her spouse… from harassment, economic harm, and physical danger. If Ms. Maxwell were to violate her bail conditions, which she has no intention of doing… she would be leaving her spouse…with virtually nothing.”

     

    In a letter to Judge Alison J. Nathan, Mr Borgerson added: “The person described in the criminal charges is not the person we know. I have never witnessed anything close to inappropriate with Ghislaine. Quite to the contrary, the Ghislaine I know is a wonderful and loving person… I believe that Ghislaine had nothing to do with Epstein’s crimes.”

     

    13th December 2019 – Purchased for £1.004 million ($1.070 million, €1.121 million or درهم3.932million) in a cash transaction on 13th December 2019 by a shell company formed on 18th November 2019 named Granite Reality LLC after being marketed by Margaret Weathers of Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty. Granite Realty LLC’s representative at the time was Jennifer Johnson of the same firm.

     

    According to a report in the Concord Monitor in November 2020, “an office building in South Boston, 155 Seaport Boulevard, [was] listed as the LLC’s address. According to the documents, Granite Reality purchased the land from Massachusetts lawyer Richard Yospin for $1,070,800 on 13th December. Yospin could not be reached for comment by press time. An online listing names New London-based realtor Margaret Weathers as the agent who sold the property. Weathers declined to comment on the sale. Two different houses sit on the land, public records show – the larger, a farmhouse-style home built in 2003, the second a cabin dating to 1800. The records list the property’s assessed value at $923,787.”

     

    19th April 2019 – Listed for sale for £959,000 ($1.195 million, €1.082 million or درهم4.389 million) according to realty website Zillow.

     

    15th December 2017 – Sold for £843,000 ($1.050 million, €951,000 or درهم3.856 million) after having subject to a “pending sale” for £1.003 million ($1.250 million, €1.132 million or درهم4.591 million) on 18th October 2017.

     

    2002 – Built in the “Cape” style as a “custom designed” timber framed single family residence. Subsequently described as an “outdoor lover’s dream home” and lauded for having “views of the Mount Sunapee foothills to the west” as well as a room with a “cathedral ceiling and a spectacular chandelier [and] a wall of glass [that] frames a stunning southwestern view beyond the stone patio.”

     

  • Extravagance Knows No Bounds – £36m Mansion Previously Owned By Disgraced Tycoons Alan Bond And Conrad Black Again For Sale

    Extravagance Knows No Bounds – £36m Mansion Previously Owned By Disgraced Tycoons Alan Bond And Conrad Black Again For Sale

    Matthew Steeples takes a look at a £36 million Kensington mansion formerly owned by disgraced business tycoons Alan Bond and Lord Black; its former chatelaine was known for stating “I have an extravagance that know no bounds”

    Sir Winston Churchill’s daughter Mary Soames once described the buccaneering businessman and media tycoon Lord Black of Crossharbour as “London’s biggest bore unhung” whilst his wife, Lady Black – better known as the author and journalist Barbara Amiel – was suggested to be just a “rich bitch” by Sarah Sands in a “case for the defence” article in the Independent in October 2006.

     

    “Poster boy for the 80s” turned fraudster and jailbird Alan Bond (1938 – 2015) was an English-Australian businessman equally Marmite-like in being liked or loathed and now a Kensington mansion owned for a time by both subsequently disgraced businessmen is once again for sale.

     

    14 Cottesmore Gardens, formerly known as 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens, was purchased by Alan Bond’s Satellite Group for £7 million in the 1980s and sold by administrators of that business to Conrad Black and his wife for the knockdown sum of just £3.5 million in 1992.

     

    Plain old Mr and Mrs Black (as they then were) lavished further millions – some of which came from the company Hollinger International, Inc., which ultimately resulted in their downfall – on the double fronted 19th century mansion and used it for entertaining on a lavish scale. Guests, including the likes of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, Joan Collins, Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Goldsmith, James Hanson, Arnold Weinstock, Jacob Rothschild, Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair, were said to flock to the parties they gave there, but in 2005 these gatherings of upto 400 people at a time came to an almighty end.

     

    Forced to sell at a bargain basement price of just £13.1 million on an ask of £17.5 million as the Canadian born billionaire faced jail time in America, Lord and Lady Black’s tenure was over and the residence saw its “arriviste torch” passed to Juan and Adriana Villalonga, a couple described as “a Mexican telecom czar and his beauty-queen wife.” Of what came next, The Globe And Mail’s Paul Waldie pointedly penned in February 2007: “[They] quickly erased many of the features that the Blacks prized.”

     

    Once again for sale as of April 2023, the value of 14 Cottesmore Gardens has again been deemed to have substantially risen. Knight Frank offer the 12,310 square foot, five-storey residence at a punchy price of £36 million and laud it as “imposing” and “presented in good order throughout.” They add that a “pre-planning consultation” has found that further accommodation could be added that would take the internal space to more than 15,000 square feet; business barons with deep pockets only need apply.

     

    Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party. Follow Matthew Steeples on Twitter at @M_Steeples.

     

    Pictured Top – 54-foot wide 14 Cottesmore Gardens is described by selling agents Knight Frank as “offering lateral living so often requested but so hard to find in central London.” They neglect to mention that with its hedges cut back to the minimum, the place actually looks extremely forlorn.

     

    Lord and Lady Black Tom Bower Cardinal Richelieu Marie Antoinette
    Flamboyant Lord and Lady Black dressed as Cardinal Richelieu and Marie Antoinette for a party at Kensington Palace in 2000. For a time, the couple employed 17 butlers (if Tom Bower is to be believed) and had two private jets and homes – aside from the 19th Cottesmore Gardens mansion – in New York, Palm Beach and Toronto. “Guests packed into their parties at Cottesmore Gardens,” Bower remarked in his 2006 book the couple, adding: “Amiel was a big spender… Under the control of senior butler Andrew Lightwood, second butler Peter Wilson and a succession of third butlers, Amiel’s life in Kensington had become what her constantly changing staff called ‘bizarre.’ Each recruit was taken by Lightwood on an introductory tour of the house, ending on the roof. ‘Make sure the landing lights are on at all times,’ instructed Lightwood solemnly, ‘because Madame takes off from here on her broomstick looking for cats. She needs the lights to guide her return.’ His face would crack into a smile. ‘Most important, take care that she never sees you. She hates seeing any of us.’ Amiel’s eccentricity demanded that her staff hid whenever she approached, diving into cupboards if necessary, and never entered her quarters when she was present. Every day, all the bed linen was changed and subjected to ‘the penny test.’ A coin was dropped onto the sheets. If it failed to bounce they were not drawn sufficiently tight. Every cushion was arranged to a precise pre-ordained position, and each towel placed exactly as Amiel had predetermined. ‘Andrew!’ she screamed down the telephone on one memorable occasion, ‘the towels are in the wrong place!’ Lightwood, as Amiel knew, was in New York, but he was expected to telephone the staff in the house in London to rectify the error. ‘You f**king pillock!’ she yelled at another member of staff for reading her ‘Daily Mail’ before it was delivered to her.”
    Barrbara Amiel drawing room 14 Cottesmore Gardens
    Barbara Amiel Black (or ‘Lady Black’ as she prefers to be known) in her drawing room at Cottesmore Gardens (pictured). Of her, Sarah Sands on Lord and Lady Black in the ‘Independent’ in October 2006 opined: “Conrad and Barbara in their monstrous, glamorous way, knew how to throw parties. The talk was of geo-politics and hemlines. Nowadays, we scorn their extravagance and doubt the source of their wealth with prune-faced hindsight. Meanwhile, everyone is sucking up to Russians…. Barbara would disingenuously begin her midnight calls to me by saying in her low, breathy voice: ‘I hope I am not disturbing you.’ She would then offer little glimpses of her own home life. I remember her mentioning that Conrad Black was upstairs playing with his fleet of toy gun ships in the bath… I remember her examining an exhibition of doll’s houses at the Chelsea Flower Show and sighing how restful it would be to live in this cosy little home. How she envied people in small houses. The burden of wealth was one of her more dangerous fantasies. At one of her Gatsby-style parties in Kensington, she flinched at the elaborate canapés on offer: ‘Really, all I want is a sausage,’ she said, piteously. Then, she ran a hand down her inconceivably expensive dress and whispered: ‘I hate these parties, I am so shy.’ Later, I was invited to her boudoir, where she lay on cushion surrounded by her women friends. She was Kensington’s Cleopatra, surrounded by maidens such as the designer and Forte daughter Olga Polizzi, the political thinker Tessa Keswick and the writer Miriam Gross.”
    Drawing room 14 Cottesmore Gardens today
    The very same drawing room at 14 Cottesmore Gardens today. The décor is now somewhat more modern and less ‘classical country house-ified.’ It’s certainly more Soho Farmhouse than Alberto Pinto in style; it is currently a space that the former Meghan Markle would feel more at home than say, perhaps, the likes of Lord and Lady Black’s chum Ghislaine Maxwell and her fellow noxious nonce Ponzi scheming paedophile boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein. Mr Pinto was responsible, it should be noted, for the designs of most of Epstein’s residences.
    12 - 14 Cottesmore Gardens Conrad Black
    The front elevation of 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens during the era it was owned by Lord and Lady Black.
    Conrad Black Barbara Amiel Ghislaine Maxwell Jeffrey Epstein Little Black Book
    Multiple entries for Lord and Lady Black during the time they owned 14 Cottesmore Gardens appeared in the ‘Little Black Book’ address book often attributed as being that of the friends and associates of Jeffrey Epstein, but that featured more of the contacts of Ghislaine Maxwell in fact. In October 2020, Barbara Amiel took revenge on the pension pot plunderer’s padeophile sex trafficker daughter by featuring her in her “score-settling” memoir ‘Friends & Enemies: A Life in Vogue, Prison, & Park Avenue.” Maxwell had “dumped” Lady Black when Lord Black was being investigated for fraud. She wrote of their last meeting: “We were friends – so putting on my ‘So good to see you’ face, I headed for her. She bolted. Turned that sharp tight little turn when you really want to get away. And that was it.”
    Barbara Amiel
    Of the clear lover of plastic surgery Lady Black, in October 2020, Sarah Sands remarked in ‘The Mail on Sunday’: “She had a bohemian, almost masculine, view of opportunistic sex. She describes, for instance, accompanying an early love in his white Triumph sports car ‘in which once or twice I had performed fellatio to the fascination of passing truck drivers, all for fun.’”
    Conrad Black Barbara Amiel 2012
    After getting out of the clink in 2012, Lord and Lady Black decided to go back on the ‘razzle-dazzle’ and posed for photographers before heading back to London to party with friends. In May 2019, the rambunctious peer arrogantly announced he’d be returning to the House of Lords after President Donald Trump pardoned and praised him. Commenting, of this pardon, Lord Black declared: “I’m not bitter… Officially in the United States, I’ve never been charged and I won in the end. It was a war and there are casualties in wars. I lost the time, I lost a lot of money, but as you can see my standards of living isn’t bad… The truth is, these, last 15 years, I haven’t been as interested in British politics as I was before – in the Thatcher years. It could be quite interesting again, in fact it is as of right now – it’s very interesting… It’s my good fortune that at a time when it is feasible, it happens – by happy coincidence – that it is a time of great fermentation in British public affairs.” Surprisingly, he doesn’t seem to have turned up on occasions since.
    Alan Bond
    The previous owner of 14 Cottesmore Gardens, Alan Bond (1938 – 2015), will forever be remembered as “Australia’s most notorious corporate criminal.” Born in Hammersmith, London, Bond’s first crime occurred when he was charged with theft aged 14 in Fremantle in Australia and whilst he is remembered for bankrolling the successful challenge for the 1983 America’s Cup, it is for causing the then biggest corporate collapse in Australian history that he will be go down in history.
    Adriana Abascal López-Cisneros Villalonga with Emmanuel Schreder
    Former Miss Mexico Adriana Abascal López-Cisneros (at the time Adriana Villalonga) bought the house in 2005. She divorced the Spanish businessman Juan Villalonga in 2009 and married the French businessman Emmanuel Schreder in Ibiza in June 2013. In August 2014, the magazine ‘Quién’ featured the model and television presenter on its cover and at that time she described her new husband as “the love of my life.”
    Telefónica Juan Villalonga and wife Adriana Abascal
    Madrid born Juan Villalonga became the joint owner of 14 Cottesmore Gardens with his then wife Adriana Abascal – the couple were married between 2000 and 2009 – in 2005. He is listed on Companies House as being a director of the now dissolved Medikidz Foundation at the address between August 2009 and November 2013. Married since 2011 to a photographer named Vanessa Von Zitewitz, Mr Villalonga was a partner at McKinsey & Company in the 1980s, CEO for Credit Suisse First Boston and Bankers Trust in Spain in the early 1990s and CEO of Telefónica from 1996 to 2000. He was named as one of the best performing chief executive officers in the world by ‘Harvard Business Review’ in 2010 and is also linked to addresses in Monaco.

    The Names & Numbers – 14 Cottesmore Gardens (formerly known as ’12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens’), Kensington, London, W8 5PR, United Kingdom

    April 2023 – Offered for sale for £36 million ($44.4 million, €40.9 million or درهم163.2 million) through Knight Frank. Valued on Homipi at an upper sum of £28.558 million ($35.250 million, €32.440 million or درهم129.456 million).

     

    2009 – Mr and Mrs Villalonga divorce and subsequently Adriana Abascal married Emmanuel Schreder, a French businessman, in Ibiza in June 2013.

     

    2005 – Sold by Lord and Lady Black for £13.1 million ($16.2 million, €14.9 million or درهم59.4 million) to Spanish businessman Juan Villalonga Navarro and Mexican model, Miss Mexico winner and television presenter Adriana Abascal López-Cisneros Villalonga.

     

    October 2004 – Placed for sale for £17.5 million ($21.6 million, €19.9 million or درهم79.3 million) according to NZ Herald.

     

    January 2004 – Valued at £14 million ($17.3 million, €15.9 million or درهم63.5 million) according to The Globe And Mail. At the time, the “mansion” in “the upscale Kensington neighbourhood” was described as having “10 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms and a swimming pool.”

     

    Featured also in The Guardian in an article by Chris Tryhorn. Quoting Lord Black, he shared: “At a certain price, anything is for sale. [It has] been shown to people in the not-too-distant-past.”

     

    Going further, Tryhorn added: “Artwork from the 18th and 19th centuries lines the walls, and there is plenty of storage space for the extensive wardrobe and shoe collection of Lord Black’s wife, Barbara Amiel, who famously declared once that her ‘extravagence knows no bounds.’ … It was originally two homes and one of the two original front doors is now a ‘deliveries’ entrance. He has used it in the past to host dinners with butler and maid service that was part-paid by Hollinger.”

     

    Also in 2004, in a profile in The Spectator, Peter Oborne wrote:

     

    “Every year the Blacks threw two parties, one at Christmas and one summer event, at their double-fronted 11-bedroom mansion in Cottesmore Gardens. Everybody who mattered at the time went: Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Goldsmith, James Hanson, Arnold Weinstock, Jacob Rothschild, royalty, the playwright Tom Stoppard.”

     

    “Some of these, injudiciously as it turned out, agreed to join the main Hollinger board. The luckier ones – Peter Carrington, Robert Salisbury – got away with being made directors of The Telegraph. As the Tories faded out, Labour ministers started to arrive, the indefatigable Peter Mandelson, David Blunkett and other ministers eager to ingratiate themselves with the Tory press. Prince and Princess Michael of Kent were assiduous in attendance. In London, the Nineties belonged to the Blacks. They were London’s most glamorous power couple.”

     

    “There had been a time when both Blacks had kept their feet on the ground. This ceased to be the case. One evening Barbara Black rang Charles Moore panic-stricken from her Kensington home. There had been a last-minute drop-out from one of the famous Black dinner parties. ‘I’m short of a woman,’ she told Moore. Moore surveyed the newsroom. His gaze alighted on the journalist Eleanor Mills, by chance the stepdaughter of the Cabinet minister Tessa Jowell.”

     

    “An hour later, hastily groomed, made-up and brushed, Mills was sipping pre-dinner drinks in Cottesmore Gardens. Then disaster struck. A male guest, Max Fisher, dropped out. Mills was approached by Conrad Black. ‘Finish your drink and skedaddle,’ he told her. Barbara Black then told her to go to the kitchen and out through the servants’ door, where the driver would pick her up and take her home.”

     

    2001 – Conrad Black is elevated to a life peerage in the United Kingdom at the suggestion of Tony Blair. He sat on the Conservative benches in the House of Lords until 2007 as The Right Honourable The Lord Black of Crossharbour KCSG, but took a “leave of absence” between 2012 and 2019.

     

    28th May 1996 – The Royal Borough of Kensington And Chelsea ordered that 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens “shall be known and described” simply instead as 14 Cottesmore Gardens.

     

    Mid 1990s – The Blacks set about renovating 12 and 14 Cottesmore Gardens with the help of J. E. Evans Associates. Of the work in October 2006, The Sunday Times shared a segment of Tom Bower’s 2006 hatchet job Conrad and Lady Black that read: “Amiel vowed to create a palace that would attract celebrity worshipers of a power couple. Part of the first floor was to be removed to create a huge ground floor reception area.”

     

    1992 – 12 and 14 Cottesmore Gardens sold by the administrators of the affairs of Alan Bond through estate agents Savills to media tycoon Conrad Black and his Watford born journalist wife Barbara Amiel Black for “well under the asking price” for a sum of £3.5 million ($4.3 million, €4 million or درهم15.9 million).

     

    Mr Bond had been granted mortgages valued at £16.2 million ($20 million, €18.4 million or درهم73.5 million) on the property by Bell Satellite Services on the property along with two others at 4 and 16 Belgrave Mews in London, SW1 previously according to a report published by Financial Review in March 1990.

     

    1991 – Rented to an American businessman for £6,000 per week ($7,400, €6,800 or درهم27,200 per week).

     

    1990 – Placed in the hands of administrators of Mr Bond’s and placed for sale through Savills for a bargain basement sum of £3.8 million ($4.7 million, €4.3 million or درهم17.2 million) according to Financial Review.

     

    1980s – Sold to Alan Bond’s Bell Satellite Group for £7 million ($8.6 million, €8 million or درهم31.7 million).

     

    Circa 1905 – Walter Tapper is said to have “designed a library with handsome Arts and Crafts plasterwork (now removed) at the rear of the building.”

     

    1903 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens registered as the home of a Mrs Benson according to the Muster Roll of Angus: South African War, 1899 – 1902.

     

    1869 – In their current marketing blurb, Knight Frank suggest: “There has been a house on the site of 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens since at least 1869. The current house has been altered, extended and most notably joined over the subsequent century and a half. With the local planning department strongly opposed to further amalgamation of homes, opportunities to acquire a house of this width will be rarer still in the future.”

     

    1850s to 1860s – Built “under the direction of David Howell, of Serjeants Inn, Fleet Street.” Mr Howell was described in 1853 as an “articled clerk to a solicitor, lately carrying on business as a solicitor.” The architecture was lauded as: “Designed in a bold classical manner, with rather fleshy consoles and modillions… and bands of Vitruvian scroll between the bases of the ground-floor windows.”

     

    More photographs of the £36 million mansion…

    Image 1 - 14 Cottesmore Gardens(1)
    An entrance hall where power and privilege have most certainly mingled previously.
    Image 2 - 14 Cottesmore Gardens(1)
    The 54-foot wide drawing is lauded by selling realtors Knight Frank as “arguably the best room in the house” and “double aspect.” They add: “[It has] six windows overlooking the street and additional views over the private garden to the rear.”
    Image 3 - 14 Cottesmore Gardens(1)
    The columns where Barbara Amiel Black once posed for photographs remain, but the subsequent owners eliminated much of the 1990s ‘brash’ that had been installed by a Watford born woman whose excess clearly offended so many.
    Image 4 - 14 Cottesmore Gardens(1)
    This dining room, where Conrad Black hosted presidents and prime ministers, is now somewhat diminished. The table for eight looks completely out of place and a future owner would do well to install something a little grander.
    Image 5 - 14 Cottesmore Gardens(1)
    A double height entertaining space was installed at the insistence of the loftier-than-lofty Lady Black in the 1990s and it remains today. However, it is now currently being used for more casual affairs such as Netflix viewing rather than being the scene of something that you’d more likely find in the ‘House of Cards’ in fact.
    Image 6 - 14 Cottesmore Gardens(1)
    A new owner might reinstate the grandeur of the past; sadly, however, this seems unlikely and the purchaser is more likely to be a footballer or Internet tycoon than a super-connected business tycoon.
    Image 7 - 14 Cottesmore Gardens(1)
    This currently very dark and very depressing study would most certainly not appeal to the very clearly very, very bright yet very, very pompous The Right Honourable The Lord Black of Crossharbour KCSG – a man who is said to count Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte as “his military heroes.” Of him in July 1997, Mark Honigsbaum in the ‘Independent’ remarked: “Although Black’s grandfather had briefly been a business partner of Harold Harmsworth, the original Viscount Rothermere, it was from his father, George Montegu Black Jr, that Black learned the art of corporate warfare, the importance of historical perspective and that gambling provides a disappointing rate of return compared to the Dow Jones index… The young Conrad was precocious. At the age of eight he sank his life savings of $60 into a single share of General Motors. He also became obsessed with Napoleon, and would astound his father’s friends by reeling off details of campaigns. Another story has him washing dollar bills and hanging them out to dry on a line outside his father’s home in Toronto. The last is apocryphal – Black says he slipped in the mud and was cleaning his change – but the image of the young capitalist, wise beyond his years, is accurate. His childhood tutor, the historian Laurier LaPierre, once asked Black why he always seemed to have the air of someone waiting for something to happen… A few years ago, for instance, the rumour went round Fleet Street that Black had bought Napoleon’s preserved penis at an auction. Black denied it, but many remain convinced that Bonaparte’s body part sits in Black’s collection of military curios… Black is no philanderer and is devoted to his second wife, the former ‘Sunday Times’ columnist Barbara Amiel. They are said to be intellectual soul mates and the parties at their four-storey mansion in Kensington are famous for bringing together a cross-section of the great and good.”
    Image 8 - 14 Cottesmore Gardens(1)
    One could not imagine the likes of the late great Baroness Thatcher, for example, liking the idea of sitting in this extremely depressing and dark waiting area. A new owner would do well to obliterate a décor scheme that could have only been favoured by a completely colour blind banker.
    Image 9 - 14 Cottesmore Gardens(1)
    A room currently described as a ‘cinema room’ measures 28’6” by 21’6” and is situated at the rear of the house. One can imagine Conrad Black having sat here for hour upon hour watching historical dramas about Napoleon with the likes of chums such as the acclaimed historian Andrew Roberts, the gambling tycoon John Aspinall and the politician and diarist Alan Clark, but a new owner will be more likely next showing episodes of ‘Succession’ – based on ‘The Telegraph’ tycoon’s rival Rupert Murdoch – than viewing historical works one most definitely suspects.
    Image 10 - 14 Cottesmore Gardens(1)
    Dining whilst the staff cook would NEVER have been on the agenda in the era that pomposity reigned whilst Lady Black was chatelaine of 14 Cottesmore Gardens.
    Image 11 - 14 Cottesmore Gardens(1)
    A 2,000 square foot entire floor fit for a tycoon… The master bedroom suite of the house takes up the entirety of the second floor of the building. It incorporates not only the principal bedroom, but also a “his” dressing room and a “her” dressing room as well as a sitting area, a bathroom, a shower room and storage rooms. It has direct lift access and is bigger than the average Brit’s entire house.
    Dressing room 14 Cottesmore Gardens Barbara Amiel
    A dressing room in the house where Barbara Black opened up to ‘Vogue’ and displayed “closets overflowing with dazzling evening gowns, designer handbags and 100 pairs of Manolo Blahnik shoes. ‘I have an extravagance that knows no bounds,’ she famously declared. Unfortunately for Lady Black, the article was closely perused at investment company Tweedy, Browne, a Hollinger International shareholder.”
    Image 12 - 14 Cottesmore Gardens(1)
    This playroom certainly did not exist in the era that Lord and Lady Black owned the property. It would be more likely crammed with books or stuffed with Manolo Blahnik shoes than toys from Toys ‘R Us. A new owner may likely reinstate it as an additional bedroom or office or games room perhaps.
    Image 13 - 14 Cottesmore Gardens(1)
    The pool room measures 43’9” by 26’9” and is no doubt where Lady Black spent many an hour relaxing.
    Image 14 - 14 Cottesmore Gardens(1)
    The garden to the rear was where Lord and Lady Black hosted their annual summer party (with guests “spilling” into their drawing room also). In surprisingly Tardis-like fashion, the duo were able to supposedly squeeze in upto 400 guests at such occasions. Amongst those said to have enjoyed hospitality there were Joan Collins and of such, magazine publisher Nicholas Coleridge wrote: “If you get a kick out of milling about with present and former prime ministers, cabinet ministers, minor royals, dukes, editors, vastly rich Americans, distinguished historians, gossip columnists, playboys and lots of pretty ‘it’ girls, then this was the place to be.”
    Image 15 - 14 Cottesmore Gardens(1)
    The existing floor plan of the property illustrates the vast scale of the building offered. A buyer, Knight Frank observe, has additional options and “a pre-planning consultation has been carried out with RBKC by leading architects Studio Indigo.” They add: “[It] would completely reconfigure the house adding an additional basement floor and taking the internal space to more than 15,000 square foot. The resulting house would have a 40-foot by 41-foot south-facing rear garden.”
    Site plan 14 Cottesmore Gardens
    A plan of the site as presented in 1996 when 12 and 14 became known just as 14 Cottesmore Gardens.
  • A £65 Million ‘Bargain’ Boat – Seized Oligarch Gin Palace For Auction

    A £65 Million ‘Bargain’ Boat – Seized Oligarch Gin Palace For Auction

    As government of Gibraltar auctions a seized £65 million oligarch superyacht with interiors by Jeffrey Epstein’s favourite designer to ‘bargain seekers,’ Matthew Steeples asks: “Why haven’t other seized ‘questionable assets’ been sold off already?”

    On Tuesday in Gibraltar, the first sale of a superyacht seized from a Russian oligarch is likely to be hammered down when the government there flogs it at auction after it was detained when it docked there in March this year. It is estimated to be worth circa £65 million ($76.9 million, €76.6 million or درهم282.4 million), but may well sell for much less.

     

    Unused and no doubt unloved as a result of it having been impounded for five months, the 236-foot long Axioma (which was originally named ‘Red Square’) was built for President Vladimir Putin’s billionaire mate Dmitry Pumpyansky in 2013 by Dunya Yachts and is being offered by Howe Robinson Partners online in a sale that concludes at 12 noon Gibraltar time (GMT+2) on 23rd August.

     

    Of the gin palace, whilst Dunya Yachts laud it as “universally acclaimed” and “widely acknowledged as the finest yacht to ever come out of Turkey,” others mock it is as “Jeffrey Epstein naff” given its interiors were originally designed by the since croaked paedophile’s favourite designer’s Alberto Pinto (1943 – 2012) eponymous firm.

     

    Having echoes of bad taste that would undoubtedly appeal to Epstein’s big bottomed boat loving mate Lord Mandelson – a chap known for bringing together George Osborne, Nat Rothschild and Oleg Deripaska on a £127 million ($150 million, €149 million or درهم551 million) 238-foot long tub off Corfu in August 2008 – also, Axioma sleeps upto 12 in 6 cabins with a crew of upto 20 individuals. It has been described by ‘Alex The Yacht Guy’ on his YouTube channel as “one of the most chartered yachts in the industry” and has been priced out from around £75,000 per night ($88,700, €88,400 or درهم326,000 per night) upwards.

     

    Decorated to have a “beach house-style interior” according to the text of an undated marketing brochure for it prior to the exterior being part repainted in a curious-to-garish shade of baby blue, the 5 deck vessel also has a gallery, a main salon, a 14 seat dining room with Versace china and glassware, an 8 person 3D cinema, an infinity swimming pool, an alfresco dining area for upto 16, a Jacuzzi with a bar, open air and indoor gyms, a massage room, a steam room and a sun deck.

     

    Accompanying also is a ‘chase boat and limousine tender’ capable of 40 knots, two further tenders and water toys including kayaks, wakeboards, 2 Sea-Doos and a Yamaha WaveRunner.

     

    Offering caution about the condition of the vessel, Howe Robinson Partners state of Axioma in their marketing material: “[This is marketing material] a general overview and without guarantee and is left to buyers to form their own impression during inspection.”

     

    Curiously, as reported this morning by The Guardian’s Rupert Neate, proceeds from the sale will benefit JP Morgan rather than the people of Ukraine as the US investment bank is owed £17 million ($20.1 million, €20 million or درهم73.9 million) by Pumpyansky – a billionaire whose worth has previously been estimated as high as £1.84 billion ($2.18 billion, €2.17 billion or درهم8 billion).

     

    Of this situation, Super Yacht Times noted in July:

     

    “Pumpyansky [is] a shareholder of Pyrene Investments… [They] took a loan with JP Morgan Chase & Co… [but] Pumpyansky’s involvement with Pyrene Investments breaches the loan agreement. Pyrene Investments is owned by Furdberg Holding of Cyprus and, at the time of the loan agreement, Pumpyansky was the sole shareholder.”

     

    “As Pumpyansky was on the sanction list his assets were frozen and it was illegal for the bank to accept any repayments from him. With his superyacht Axioma seized in Gibraltar, JPMorgan Chase & Co. pursued an opportunity to see a return on their investment.”

     

    Of interest in the sale, Nigel Hollyer, the broker to the Admirality Marshal of the Supreme Court of Gibraltar, told The Guardian that “more than 30 people had flown to inspect the yacht in person.” He added:

     

    “[There has been an] unexpected late surge by prospective buyers. They are people from across the world. They are people who own or have owned boats of similar size, and have been attracted to this boat because of the judicial sale process – they are convinced they’re going to get a bargain.”

     

    To date, Axioma has counted Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton and Kim Kardashian’s half-sister Kendall Jenner as noted names who have spent time onboard. Who’ll be next is unknown, but one thing’s for sure – it most certainly is as unlikely to be Putin’s apologist Bernie Ecclestone – who faces his first court hearing in London on Monday coming over an alleged £400 million ($473 million, €471 million or درهم1.7 billion) fraud – as any other rotten Russian oligarch.

     

    Today, given the noted previous enthusiasm of the likes of likely next Prime Minister Liz Truss for grabbing the ill-gotten gains of Russian oligarchs, isn’t it now time that some more of the seized boats and buildings in London, Lake Como and beyond belonging to these people were put up for sale? Equally, isn’t it time that some money from such sales was actually used to help those in need in Ukraine also?

     

    Pictured top – Dmitry Pumpyansky being awarded the 4th Degree Order ‘For Merit to the Fatherland’ on 31st July 2014 by President Vladimir Putin (left) and the Axioma superyacht formerly owned by the former in auction marketing material in August 2022.

     

  • Epstein’s Parisian Paedo Pad

    Epstein’s Parisian Paedo Pad

    Jeffrey Epstein’s Parisian paedo pad goes on sale just as the PM’s sister Rachel Johnson leaps to mucky madam Ghislaine Maxwell’s defence and her gyrating partner Geordie Greig gets ousted from the ‘Daily Mail’

    First shared by crusading author Kirby Sommers on Twitter and subsequently mentioned by Bloomberg amongst others, the croaked paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s apartment in the 16th arrondissement of Paris is now for sale.

     

    Offered by Jean-Joseph Pani and Fabrice le Ruyet of Propriétés Parisiennes Sotheby’s International Realty at a punchy price of £10.025million ($13.525 million, €11.900 million or درهم49.670 million) in spite of its gruesome associations, the 7,965 square foot property is described as being situated on the principal floor of “one of the most sumptuous buildings on the Avenue Foch.”

     

    Valdson Viera Cotrin Jeffrey Epstein dining room
    The Sotheby’s International Realty listing image of Jeffrey Epstein’s dining room in Paris (top) and his butler, cook and driver Valdson Viera Cotrin consuming a meal there (below).
    https://twitter.com/kirbysommers/status/1458857129977298944?s=11
    Crusading author of ‘Ghislaine Maxwell: An Unauthorized Biography’ Kirby Sommers was first to share the story of the sale of Jeffrey Epstein’s Paris home on 11th November. Illustrating her ability to discover relevant information that mainstream media bypasses as part of their clear laziness, Sommers also shared images of Jeffrey Epstein’s butler, cook and driver Valdson Viera Cotrin, in the apartment as evidence alongside creepy skulls amongst other things.
    Jeffrey Epstein Paedo Palace Mansion Lenox Hill New York
    The interior of Jeffrey Epstein’s Parisian residence was likely designed by the late Alberto Pinto, whom also worked on his now sold on £69 million ($88 million, €74 million or درهم121 million) 28,000 square foot Lenox Hill, New York “paedo palace” mansion (pictured here).

    It includes a “huge entrance gallery [that] opens onto a double reception, a large office, a dining room, kitchen” and aside from upto 8 bedrooms, there is also a “beautiful fitness room” and two service studio on the top floors of the building.

     

    Described by the selling agents as having “superb volumes” and ceiling heights of 16’4”, the ex-Epstein apartment overlooks the Arc de Triomphe and is listed as being in “impeccable condition” and having had been “completely redone by a famous, world renowed decorator.” No mention is made, however, of the last occupant-owner nor the September 2019 two-day search of the flat by French police. It is was also the supposed billionaire financier’s last place of residence as a free man before he jetted into Teterboro Airport, New Jersey from Paris on 6th July 2019.

     

    Annual taxes on the palatial property, which is described as having a “security system” – without mention of whether any of Epstein’s notoriously creepy ‘blackmail cameras’ remain – amount to a staggering £28,500 ($38,395, €33,900 or درهم141,000).

     

    Backing up her discovery with a picture of Epstein’s butler, cook and driver Valdson Viera Cotrin sat having a meal in the very same dining room pictured in Sotheby International Realty’s listing imagery, Sommers’ proof is clear. Of it she remarked:

     

    “Epstein’s apartment in France is on sale. There are photos of his butler on Facebook with the same furniture. Sotheby’s is not disclosing the owner. But it is confirmed Epstein’s apartment. The same furniture. All there. Like a museum.”

     

    “All of the furniture is still there. That is a sign, to me, that this too is a staged apartment. When someone passes away it is normal for the next of kin to take some of the furniture out because of sentimental reasons. Not the case in Jeffrey Epstein’s Paris apartment.”

     

    In a further tweet, Sommers added:

     

    “Of note with the skulls and brain tissue in Jeffrey Epstein’s Parisien kitchen. Epstein told some of his victims that he was a ‘brain surgeon.’ Takes on a new meaning with this insight into his belongings in one of his homes.”

     

    Jeffrey Epstein Ghislaine Maxwell Paris
    A photo, shared by the ‘MailOnline’ in August 2019 and taken by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, shows Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in Paris (circa late 2000).
    Ghislaine Maxwell Geordie Greig gyrating
    In other news yesterday, Geordie Greig – pictured here gyrating with grubby grabber Ghislaine Maxwell, his mate since the early 2000s – the ‘Guardian’s’ media editor Jim Waterson revealed has “been ousted as editor of the ‘Daily Mail’ after just three years in the job.” Stories published in support of those he is close to were often described as having been ‘FOGged’ (‘Friend of Geordie-ed’) and it is certainly curious that his proprietor, Viscount Rothermere, was the man to announce his departure just days after the ‘Mail on Sunday’ shared their ‘world exclusive’ interview with the ‘Bouncing Czech’s’ decidedly deviant daughter.
    Elizabeth Harris Jonathan Aitken Stanley Johnson Rachel Johnson Ghislaine Maxwell party Kit-Kat Club
    Last night on Twitter also, ‘Dame’ Alun Roberts responded to a tweet by renowned reporter and ‘Hunting Ghislaine’ podcast host John Sweeney. In it, he shared an image of Rachel Johnson and her father with Jonathan Aitken and his wife Elizabeth Harris at a party hosted at The Physic Garden in Chelsea, London by the Kit Kat Club. Curiously, that club was founded by none other than Ghislaine Maxwell.

    Elsewhere this morning in The Spectator, the Prime Minister’s sister Rachel Johnson disgraced both herself and her brother with a shockingly tawdry revelation about the pair’s interactions with the currently incarcerated alleged mucky madam.

     

    At a time when their very own father, Stanley, is under scrutiny over his supposedly “handsy” behaviour towards women including Caroline Nokes MP, Rachael Johnson wrote:

     

    “It’s hard not to feel a batsqueak of pity for Ghislaine Maxwell – 500 days and counting in solitary confinement. I intersected briefly with her at Oxford.

     

    “As a fresher I wandered into Balliol JCR one day in search of its subsidised breakfast granola-and-Nescafé offering and found a shiny glamazon with naughty eyes holding court astride a table, a high-heeled boot resting on my brother Boris’s thigh.”

     

    “She gave me a pitying glance but I did manage to snag an invite to her party in Headington Hill Hall. I have a memory of her father, Bob, coming out in a towelling robe and telling us all to go home.”

     

    “I’m sure fairweather friends would not reveal they went to a Ghislaine Maxwell party: as Barbara Amiel’s brilliant memoir Friends and Enemies proves, you only know who your real chums are when you’re in the gutter.”

     

    Pictured top (left to right) – An especially creepy statue of a boy dominates the entrance hallway to the apartment, the exterior of the building and its late owner Jeffrey Epstein.

     

    Listing images of the interior of Jeffrey Epstein’s apartment in the 16th arrondissement area of Paris, France on Avenue Foch follow:

    Jeffrey Epstein Avenue Foch Paris apartment 1
    Jeffrey Epstein Avenue Foch Paris apartment 2
    Jeffrey Epstein Avenue Foch Paris apartment 3
    Jeffrey Epstein Avenue Foch Paris apartment 4
    Jeffrey Epstein Avenue Foch Paris apartment 5
    Jeffrey Epstein Avenue Foch Paris apartment 6
    Jeffrey Epstein Avenue Foch Paris apartment 7
    Jeffrey Epstein Avenue Foch Paris apartment 8