/ 4 January 2008

Moscow’s billionaires row

With birds twittering gently in the background, Aras Agalarov explains why he has decided to build a housing estate for Russia’s super-rich.

Next to him work has almost finished on a vast neo-classical villa; down the muddy track a Scottish baronial mansion rises magnificently above a line of newly planted birch trees.

‘There are certain rules. One potential buyer had an Afghan shepherd dog. We don’t allow big dogs on this estate. So I wouldn’t sell him a house. ‘Can you imagine,” he says, chuckling. ‘I lost $30-million because of a dog!”

Agalarov is a billionaire Russian property developer. He is also a man with a vision: to build the most exclusive housing community in Russia, if not the world.

The idea is for Russia’s new billionaire elite to live here happily together.

Agalarov describes his project as a kind of utopian social experiment — but without poor people. ‘I’ve planted all those trees to hide the village over there,” he says, pointing beyond a fence to a row of dilapidated dachas.

The estate is currently being fashioned on a 340ha meadow in the Istra region outside Moscow, dotted with fir trees and white camomile flowers. Several villas have been completed.

Some, with fluted columns and acanthus capitals, owe a debt to the ancient Greeks; others have been done in doughty Gothic. No two houses are the same.

The estate boasts an 18-hole golf course and an exclusive private school.There are also 14 artificial lakes, waterfalls and a spa and beach resort with imported white sand.

Agalarov plans to build 150 to 200 mansions, each costing between $20-million and $30-million.

For this you get 2 000 square metres, a salt-water swimming pool — and the guarantee your neighbours will be the right kind of people.

You also get the right kind of boulder: as well as hiring an American landscape designer, Agalarov has spent about $5-million on stones.

Potential buyers must have a personal interview with him and sign a 30-page document agreeing to abide by his rules.

Residents are forbidden from hanging out washing, carrying out home improvements or letting off fireworks. Additionally, all bodyguards will be banished to small houses on the edge of the community.

‘Most families have five or six bodyguards. Two hundred families means 1 000 bodyguards,” he explains.

Few doubt that Agalarov will be able to sell all of his houses. According to the 2007 edition of the magazine Forbes, Russia has 53 dollar billionaires. Agalarov is 95th on the Forbes list, with a fortune estimated at $540-million. He suggests his real wealth is more like $10-billion, and that many of Russia’s oligarchs are wealthier than official estimates.

Those who have grown rich under Vladimir Putin are not only plugged into Russia’s oil and gas industry. They also include many well-connected Kremlin bureaucrats, some with homes in Kensington or the south of France. Agalarov agrees that for $30-million one can buy nice property elsewhere. ‘But if you want to live in Moscow you will have to live here. There will be no other place more beautiful.”

A decade ago Russia’s new rich were famous for their love of luxury designer goods. Hadn’t that now changed? No, he says. ‘It’s still about show,” he says. ‘Show is continuing.”

The development is likely to be completed by 2009. The only obstacle spoiling Agalarov’s vision of paradise is the hamlet of Voronino, which abuts the watery edge of the estate.

The tycoon has managed to buy 14 of its 28 houses, with a view to demolishing them. So far, however, the man at No 54 — a decrepit red-brick cottage — has refused to sell, despite being offered $1-million. ‘He’ll sell in the end,” Agalarov says soothingly. —