“Israeli investor”, founder of the DST Global fund, rents out a London penthouse worth $70 million

Rentier Yuri Milner

Billionaire Yuri Milner, who last year renounced his Russian citizenship, turned out to be the buyer of a penthouse in the London residential complex One Blackfriars, apartments in which are “considered one of the most expensive real estate properties” in the British capital. The agency refers to documents from the company MFRD Property Holdings.

In those documents, MFRD Property Holdings listed Milner as having “significant” control over the Cayman Islands-registered entity that purchased the apartment. The deal was concluded back in 2021. Its amount was £57.6 million ($70.3 million). Milner’s representative confirmed the information published by Bloomberg to Forbes.

An MFRD spokesman said the money for the home purchase came through a trust and that the property was purchased for investment purposes. The beneficiary of the trust is a charitable foundation, the purchased apartment is rented out, and the income goes to the account of a non-profit organization, the representative specified.

Milner, who also owns a $100 million home in Los Altos, California, pays market rent for a London penthouse when he stays in London, he said. Currently, one of the penthouses in the 50-story One Blackfriars skyscraper on the banks of the Thames is rented for £14,950 ($18,172) per month, Bloomberg points out.

The head of the investment fund DST Global, Yuri Milner, purchased a mansion in California with a total cost, according to various estimates, of $70-75 million. […] This was first reported by TechCrunch, citing a number of reliable sources. Later, this information, citing its own sources, was confirmed by the San Jose Mercury News, reporting that the transaction amount was $75 million. The mansion with a total area of ​​about 2.5 thousand square meters is located in the city of Los Altos Hills. It also comes with a plot of land measuring approximately 4.5 hectares. As analysts note, this is the most expensive house in the history of all real estate transactions in Santa Clara County, which includes Los Altos Hills.

The purchase was made through La Paloma Property, a company registered in Delaware, where by law the heads of companies are not required to disclose their identities. Sources say the mansion was paid for in cash and shares, with one source claiming shares in the social networking site Facebook were among them. This method of paying for real estate is unusual in California. […]

Yuri Milner’s mansion in California

Milner is the founder of the DST Global fund, which has invested in Airbnb, Spotify, Meta (owns Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram, recognized as an extremist organization in Russia and banned) and other early-stage technology companies. American Forbes estimates the businessman’s fortune at $6.8 billion. Last year, Milner took 15th place in the Russian Forbes ranking, then his capital was estimated at $7.3 billion. Last October, Milner announced that he and his family had left Russian citizenship. According to him, they left Russia back in 2014, and in the summer of 2022 they officially completed the process of renouncing citizenship. Since 1999, Milner has been an Israeli citizen.

In the spring of 2022, Milner announced that he would donate $100 million to refugees from Ukraine. Founded by the businessman together with his wife Julia, the Breakthrough Prize Foundation established the Tech for Refugees initiative, which also brought together large IT companies with investments from DST Global, including Airbnb, Flexport and Spotify.

But he doesn’t have his own big tech company—Milner’s investment fund DST Global makes money by investing in shares of other people’s companies. In particular, on Facebook, Twitter, Alibaba Group, Xiaomi, Spotify, Airnbnb. And he earns quite well: Milner is credited with owning the 107-meter yacht Ulysses for $195 million. Physicist and former top manager of the World Bank Yuri Milner began his path as a global investor by investing in big tech money from VTB, Alisher Usmanov and Gazprom, which today are considered “ toxic.” But many years later he denied that he bought shares in Facebook and Twitter with “Kremlin money.”

In 2012, Milner left the capital of Mail.ru Group, which he headed – as it turned out, just in time. And since 2014, his family settled in California. His fund DST Global is headquartered in the US, UK and Hong Kong.
Yuri Milner has never been under sanctions. Among all Russian billionaires, he has perhaps the most impeccable reputation in the West and the informal status of “one of the world’s most influential technology investors.” The Milner Family Foundation Breakthrough Prize is donating $100 million to refugees from Ukraine and has partnered with Airbnb, Flexport and Spotify to establish the Tech For Refugees initiative to promote humanitarian assistance to refugees around the world. […] Since 1999, Milner has had an Israeli passport, lives in the United States on a special visa, and in the last couple of years has preferred to refer to himself as an “Israeli investor.”

In the last ten years, it has swung more towards Hong Kong and China – significant resources of Milner’s venture fund DST Global have been directed there. Milner’s last activity in Russia was in the late 2000s and received a scandalous continuation in 2017, when the Paradise Papers of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists were published. Milner was accused of investing money from Russian state-owned companies in Facebook and Twitter and making money from it.