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BFF-48
FRANCE-BRITAIN-REAL-ESTATE-TRIAL
‘Pharaonic’ Riviera estate at centre of Franco-British spat ordered
demolished
MARSEILLE, March 27, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – An illegally-built 57-million-euro
($64 million) Tuscan-style palatial property in southern France has been
ordered demolished in a long-running judicial battle between a French
property developer and his multi-millionaire British neighbours.
The property, Chateau Diter, named after its owner and builder, Frenchman
Patrick Diter, overlooks Grasse, near the French Riviera, and comprises some
3,000 square metres (32,000 square feet) of marbled rooms, giant fireplaces,
and antique columns imported from Italy.
It also boasts two helicopter pads, according to the My Private Villas
website.
Public prosecutor Pierre-Jean Gaury described the property as a “crazy,
pharaonic project, totally unlawfully and illegally built” over the course of
several years starting in 2005.
An appeals court in the city of Aix-en-Provence on Monday confirmed the
order that many of the buildings constructed since 2005 be destroyed within
18 months.
Failure to comply so will result in fines of 500 euros a day.
Diter was also ordered to pay his neighbours 450,000 euros in damages, but
an earlier imposed six-month suspended jail sentence was waived on appeal.
Diter had earlier acknowledged making “mistakes” in carrying out wave after
wave of expansion to the farmhouse on the large property he acquired in 1999.
He later sold off part of the estate to a London-based British couple,
Stephen and Caroline Butt.
Stephen Butt operates Silchester Partners, an asset management company, and
was described by the Sunday Times newspaper as one of the richest fund
managers in England.
Over 10 years, he and his wife filed a series of complaints over what they
called their neighbour’s “building frenzy” and the disturbance caused when
the property is let out for large-scale weddings and film shoots.
The property notably featured as ‘Villa Carmella’ in the first season of
‘Riviera’, a TV thriller first broadcast by Sky Atlantic.
One TV critic in Britain described the series, which stars Bourne films
actor Julia Stiles, as featuring “morally ambiguous characters, complex
relationships and ‘audacious’ excess”.
Diter, a property developer, had offered to demolish some of his
constructions, including a swimming pool, a helipad, and a road built in
protected woodland.
“At first it was just a family home (…) I went too far,” he told the
court.
He acknowledged renting the property out about five times a year for
Russian and Indian weddings, but the Butts alleged the celebrations —
charged a going rate of 50,000 euros a night — were far more frequent.
They were awarded 450,000 euros in damages.
The British couple themselves rent out their own property, Domaine St.
Jacques de Couloubrier.
On the palmerparker.com website it goes for between 14,000 (16,300 euros)
and 20,000 pounds a week.
BSS/AFP/RY/1807 hrs