Billionaire Bassam Alghanim Buys Bel Air Manse for $8.7M From Uncle Sam, Bringing the Value of His Compound to Over $100M

Published: October 10, 2019 | By: American Luxury Staff

Joe Francis—of ‘Girls Gone Wild’ infamy, et al—lost this Bel Air mansion to the U.S. government in 2018. Uncle Sam sold it this month.

Francis bought the place for $5.5 million in the early 2000s, shortly before the decade became, for him, a legal quagmire capped with a seemingly endless series of embarrassments. When it sold this month, it fetched well over $8.5 million.

The buyer, according to Variety, was Kuwaiti Bassam Alghanim, who owns a stake in family company Alghanim Industries, a large corporate entity in the Persian Gulf.

Alghanim is extremely fond of Bel Air, at least as an investment opportunity, and owns a cobbled-together estate that could easily stand in for Bel Air State Park.

In Bel Air, he’s thus far accrued ten formerly disparate properties into a rapidly expanding real estate mass that at present extends to over 20 acres. Many of the properties he’s purchased have come by way of former neighbors, so there is a series of houses to accompany the acreage.

The estimated value of Alghanim’s Bel Air compound is more than $100 million. His net worth is about $1.4 billion.

Photo credit: Google Maps

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