Luxury London home entangled in fraud case — for the third time

Behind the white stucco façade of 14 Cottesmore Gardens in one of London’s most expensive neighbourhoods lie a library, indoor swimming pool, cinema and multiple reception rooms.
Yet for all of the luxury that may come with having the keys to this Kensington manor, its recent owners share a more unfortunate theme: alleged fraud.
Having previously counted the disgraced press baron Lord Black of Crossharbour and the jailed Australian magnate Alan Bond as owners, the property is now at the centre of a big legal case in America.
It is pictured in the indictment of a former defence contractor who is accused of evading taxes in the US on income of $350 million.
As part of an alleged decades-long fraud scheme, Douglas Edelman, 72, is said to have instructed a British accountant to buy the property for £27 million in early 2010 using siphoned-off profits through a nominee business.
Edelman and his French wife, Delphine Le Dain, 58, are accused of hiding profits in an elaborate fraud involving the sale of jet fuel to US forces in Afghanistan and the Middle East after the 9/11 terrorist atrocities.
American prosecutors claim that he used money hidden in overseas bank accounts to purchase the London home, alongside an Austrian ski chalet and several yachts.
Edelman was arrested in Spain last month and US officials are seeking to extradite him on charges of conspiracy and tax evasion, among others.
If convicted it would make it a bleak trilogy for the house, leaving three of its former owners guilty of fraud offences.
Bond, who was born in London but moved to Australia as a child, bought the house in the 1980s, having become one of Australia’s richest men. It was purchased by Black for £3.5 million in 1992, the year that Bond was declared bankrupt and four years before he was found guilty of fraud.
Black, who ran a publishing empire including The Daily Telegraph, used the home to launch himself on to London’s social scene, throwing parties with his second wife, the newspaper columnist Barbara Amiel. He was later found to have siphoned off millions from his company, then was pardoned by Donald Trump in 2019.
Black sold the property in 2005. It was put up for sale last year with a guide price of £32 million.