The sanctioned oligarch’s son and a £160m London property empire

theguardian.com:

The son of a Russian billionaire sanctioned for supporting the dictator who runs Belarus has been linked to a £160m portfolio of London properties.

Said Gutseriev, a 34-year-old businessman with British and Russian nationality, appears to have spent years amassing a collection of at least seven properties in central London, according to the findings of a joint investigation by the Guardian and the Belarusian Investigative Center, part of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

The portfolio ranges from large office buildings in the City to a pair of £17m townhouses in south Kensington knocked together to make one residence.

Said’s father, Mikhail Gutseriev, was blacklisted last year, by the EU in June and the UK in August, months after the violent repression of protests which threatened to bring to an end 26 years of autocratic rule by Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko. The UK government described Gutseriev as “a longstanding associate” of the president, and had used his business interests to support Lukashenko’s government.

All of the properties examined in the investigation were bought before Mikhail was sanctioned. Six were acquired between 2004 and 2012, when Said was either at school or university, or was just starting his career at the FTSE 100 commodities trader Glencore. Said attended £14,500 a term Harrow school before studying at Oxford.

Leaked documents suggest Said was given a head start thanks to his family’s wealth. One of the properties appears to ultimately belong to a trust established by his father in 2007. Said was listed as a beneficiary of the trust in official paperwork from 2008 and 2009 seen by the Guardian. The paperwork also names him as a beneficiary of a second trust,