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Russian billionaire pays $23M for Wellington polo estate
Andrey Borodin also bought Park Place, the most expensive house in Britain, for $219 million in 2012
A billionaire Russian exile living in the United Kingdom paid $23 million for a massive equestrian compound in Wellington that was once home to the Lechuza Caracas polo team, The Real Deal has learned.
Park Place Polo Fields Corp. bought the 62-acre polo facility at 4370 South Road, records show. The entity is linked to Andrey Borodin, a Russian financial expert, economist and businessman who was formerly the president of the Bank of Moscow. He allegedly was a suspect in a fraud probe at the bank under his governance, and left Russia for the United Kingdom in 2011, according to published reports. Borodin bought Park Place, Britain’s most expensive house, for $219 million in 2012. He was granted political asylum in the United Kingdom in 2013. He also owns the Park Place polo team in the U.K.
4370 South Road, Wellington (Credit: Realtor)
The seller is PBC Polo Properties LLC, led by financier Nate Ward. Ward is partner and co-founder of Palm Beach Capital, a private equity investment firm based in West Palm Beach.
Completed in 2015, the equestrian compound includes a 60-stall polo barn, a 12-stall show jumping barn, tack rooms, feed rooms, an aquatic horse walker, staff apartments with a kitchen and a manager’s office, among other features.
Thomas Baldwin, broker/owner of Equestrian Sotheby’s International Realty, represented both the buyer and the seller. Baldwin declined to comment on the buyer’s identity.
“It’s probably one of the most highly rated polo facilities in North America,” Baldwin said.
4370 South Road, Wellington (Credit: Realtor)
The property last sold in October 2017 for $17.1 million. The seller at the time was PF Polo Properties LLC, a company controlled by Emma Cisneros, CEO of Quorum Management Company, who was tied to Venezuelan banker and polo player Victor Vargas. Vargas owns the Lechuza Caracas polo team as well as Banco Occidental de Descuento in Venezuela.
Wellington is regarded as the equestrian capital of the United States. It hosts the Winter Equestrian Festival every year at the Palm Beach International Equestrian Center, which brings some of the top riders in the world to South Florida.
Many wealthy celebrities have bought estates in the area. In 2018, Billy Joel paid $3.5 million for a five-acre horse ranch in Wellington for his fourth wife, Alexis Roderick, an experienced equestrian rider. In 2017, a company tied to billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, spent $8.25 million for land next to her Wellington estate.