Shamed BHS tycoon Sir Philip Green spends £10 million on luxury pad featuring a lift and staff quarters as staff await pensions news
AS tycoon 'Sir Shifty' remains in the middle of the BHS pension storm, his wife is adding the finishing touches to a lavish £10.6 million home.
Sir Philip Green's wife Lady Tina Green has been spotted visiting the six-bedroom "palace" in one of London's most exclusive spots.
The four-storey pad - fit with a rooftop bar, super-sized basement and glass roof - will allegedly be ready for the Greens by March.
Architect drawings submitted to the local council in June show it now has a lift and two dressings rooms as well as staff quarters in the basement.
It has been registered to an offshore firm linked to Sir Philip's wife and will be home to the Topshop tycoon and Lady green's daughter Chloe, who turns 26 in March, according to a source.
The source told the Sunday Mirror: "It’s like a palace and is being done out to an incredible standard, no expense spared. Lady Tina has been in charge of doing up the property and has visited it to keep a close eye on progress.
"The plan is for it to be handed to Chloe as her first proper house of her own, so Lady Tina wants to make sure everything is perfect."
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Builders have been spotted renovating the mansion after Topshop heiress Chloe was handed the keys to a flat close to the pad for her 21st birthday. Her mum was pictured visiting in November.
The the townhouse was sold to Daniel Pittack, a close friend of the Greens, in November 2014.
Then ownership was transferred to Mottistone Holdings Ltd, a newly formed firm based in the British Virgin Islands.
A second address for the offshore company was in Boulevard Princesse Charlotte in Monaco – also the registered office for Lady Green’s interior design firm, Green and Mingarelli Design.
The use of an off-shore company is legitimate but controversial as they are used to minimise tax.
Yesterday Sir Philip denied having anything to do with the property. Asked if Chloe would live there, he said: "That's not correct, OK? At this point that is not confirmed."
In 2016, when asked about the house, Sir Philip said: "Let's be clear, I don't know anything about it. What is the relevance anyway?
"I am not her [Lady Green]. I have no idea. For God's sake, can't you people just get lost, can't you go and annoy somebody else?"
A spokesman for Sir Philip and his wife said lady Green has not received any money from BHS for more than 10 years but the apparent purchase of the London pad is likely to anger former BHS workers, 22,000 of which have pensions hanging in the balance.
Sir Philip's reputation has taken a battering in recent months after the the Topshop boss sold 88-year-old BHS for £1 just a year before its collapse.
Labour's Frank Field, chair of the Work and Pensions Select committee, branded the property "BHS Pensions House".
The sale and subsequent closure of the store cost 11,000 jobs, sparking an investiagtion by regulators as well as a parliamentary inquiry.
He piled on the pressure for the tycoon to sort out the BHS pensions deficit: "If Sir Philip think's we're going away, he's delusional."
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