Real Estate

Russian Billionaire Wouldn’t Cut Down Trees Despite Dying Neighbor’s Pleas

Every time we think we’ve seen it all with the Russian oligarch set, something even more ridiculous comes along. While most of these disputes usually involve fighting one another for money and power, this tale is a bit different: it’s about a dying neighbor and some very tall trees.

Rostislav Ordovsky-Tanaevsky Blanco is a billionaire who made his fortune by pioneering a fast food empire and a major importing business in Russia. He’s been named Russia’s Person of the Year, and so on and so forth. He also happens to have a house with leylandii trees (big, tall hedges, basically) so tall that his neighbors claim they can’t see the light of the day. Ordovsky-Tanaevsky said he’d cut them a little lower, but he never did. When one of his neighbors was on her deathbed and just wanted a peek at the sky from her bedroom, things started to turn sour.

Doreen Hunt died in February, but her husband hasn’t stopped in his ambitious attempts to get those trees removed. It appears he hasn’t been able to get any kind of legal action moving forward, so he’s doing the next best thing — going to the press. He tells The Daily Mail:

“My dying wife was in such a terrible state in her bedroom, which was dark during the day, and she said to me ‘I wish I could just get a look at the sky.’”

As we said, it’s hardly your usual oligarch brawl, but…well, Rotislav, it looks like you’re going to have to cut down those trees.

TAGS: Ordovsky-Tanaevsky | Ordovsky-Tanaevsky trees | Rostislav Ordovsky-Tanaevsky Blanco | russian oligarch won't cut down trees

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