A Russian billionaire who failed to complete a deal to buy one of France's most beautiful houses has lost his deposit of €39 million.
Mikhail Prokhorov had made several bids to buy the sprawling Villa Leopolda de Villefranche-sur-Mer before owner Lily Safra accepted a price of €390 million in July 2008.
But Mr Prokhorov, a nickel magnate who topped Russia's rich list last year according to business magazine Finans, pulled out of the sale as the financial crisis broke in late 2008.
The final contract wasn't signed by a December 15th, 2008, deadline, causing the deposit to be forfeited under French law.
Since then, Mr Prokhorov (44) has been trying to recover the 10 per cent deposit he paid for the villa, which is perched between Nice and Monaco and was built for King Leopold II of Belgium.
The court in Nice said today Ms Safra did not need to pay Mr Prokhorov back the deposit.
"We have lost," said Mr Prokhorov's lawyer Jean-Pierre Gastaud. "The court decided that the notarised document was perfectly legitimate." He said he would advise his client to appeal.
Ms Safra, widow of banker Edmond Safra, said €36 million of the deposit would be donated to education, medical research and humitarian charities in France, Israel, Rwanda, the US and the UK. "The law has been applied, and justice has prevailed," she said in a statement yesterday.
Residences in the French Riviera, chiefly at Cap Ferrat and Monaco, vie with London as the most expensive in the world.
The sale of the villa, the most expensive home in the world at the time, came at the end of a decade-long boom in property prices on the Cote d'Azur. In the second quarter of 2008, luxury homes on nearby Cap Ferrat were worth about €42,320 per square metre.
King Leopold II, built the house at the centre of the dispute in 1902. Mr Safra bought the property from Giovanni Agnelli and used it to entertain guests including Ronald Reagan and Frank Sinatra. Mr Safra died in a fire in his 30-room penthouse in Monaco in 1999.
His US-born nurse Ted Maher was was arrested under suspicion of starting the fire, and was convicted by a Monaco court in 2002. Maher claimed that he started the fire to carry out a daring rescue, and thus increase his standing in the Safra family's eyes but he allegedly lost control of the fire unintentionally.
Mr Prokhorov made his fortune in the chaotic 1990s when businessmen bought up parts of former Soviet Union industries for a fraction of their real value. He is one of the owners of Norilsk Nickel, the world's biggest nickel producer, and Polyus Gold, Russia's biggest gold producer.
Agencies