LONDON: Elena franchuk, a Ukrainian businesswoman and friend of singer Sir Elton John has bought a house at an estimated cost of 80 million pounds, surpassing the previous record of 67 million pounds paid by Indian steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal for his Kensington Palace home here.
The five-storey detached Victorian villa in Kensington, west London, has been undergoing extensive development for the past 18 months and will not be complete until April, a report in The Daily Telegraph said on Saturday.
The house has more than 10 bedrooms and an underground swimming pool. Besides, the property has a gym, a sauna, a cinema and a secure panic room in case of intruders or an attack.
Until 1997, the property was a girls' preparatory school. It was bought in June 2006 by a firm of developers specialising in exclusive properties.
