Chinese billionaire Cheung Chung-kiu has been granted planning permission to build a huge private palace overlooking London's Hyde Park.
The green light for the eight-storey, 5,760 sq metre (62,000 sq foot) mansion comes months after Westminster City Council banned the construction of buildings that are oversized for their footprint.
The vast development is on the site of 2-8a Rutland Gate and once complete with the Hong Kong-based property tycoon's improvements is expected to be worth up to £500 million ($690m).
Hailing from a territory dominated by property magnates, Mr Cheung has built up his UK presence and is behind a series of high profile projects. Estimates of his personal fortune range between £1 billion and £1.5bn.
Known as CK to his friends, he is chairman of property company CC Land, which owns London's “Cheesegrater” skyscraper.
Westminster council said the billionaire's building project was allowable as the plans were to renovate a single dwelling.
The council also confirmed Mr Cheung would not be required to make any contributions towards building affordable homes in the borough as he plans to build a private family home.
A Westminster council spokesman said new affordable homes were a “priority” and 725 had been built since 2017.
The property is near Kensington Gardens and has a view of the central London park from 68 of its windows. It is in SW1, London's most expensive postcode.
Between January 2017 and April 2021, 253 £5m-plus property sales took place in the area — 17 per cent of all prime transactions in London during this period.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
