UAE president buys £65m Chelsea mansion complete with swimming pool, cinema room and car lift in one of London's biggest home purchases since the Covid pandemic

A company linked to the president of the United Arab Emirates has picked up a luxury mansion in one of London's poshest areas for what he would likely consider pocket change - at an eye-watering £65million.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan acquired the house in Chelsea - complete with swimming pool, cinema room and car lift - in November last year via a shell company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands and based in Jersey.

The house was one of three built by a group of businessmen on the site of a former BT telephone exchange in the 2000s.

MBZ, as he is often known, succeeded his late brother as UAE president and ruler of Abu Dhabi in 2022.

Each of the identical mansions was built with a swimming pool, cinema room and car lift - ideal for the sheikh to live in comfort should he find himself in the UK capital.

But planning records suggest the sheikh already has designs on overhauling the house - after a building warrant to remove it and create a gym was approved by the local borough council last year.

(Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates (pictured with Vladimir Putin) has purchased a £65million mansion in Chelsea)

(The house was one of three identical mansions built with a swimming pool, car lift and cinema room in the 2000s on the site of a former telephone exchange)

(MBZ, as he is often known, visited the UK in 2021 - where he was pictured inspecting the Grenadier Guards)

(He also visited in December 2020, with a socially distanced visit to Downing Street to see then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson)

The application was received on November 14, two weeks after the house had been acquired.

MBZ could well make use of the house on his visits to London - having visited the UK in an official capacity several times in recent years.

As Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi he visited London in 2021, where he inspected the Grenadier Guards alongside then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whom he also met in 2020 for a socially distanced visit during the pandemic.