Quite a few people in the capital market marked Lev Leviev's departure from Bnei Brak to London as a watershed moment, the moment when fortunes turned for the ultra-Orthodox tycoon. In 2008, just before the Great Depression and the Africa-Israel debt settlement, Leviev bought a luxurious mansion in the prestigious Hampstead neighborhood in northwest London, not far from the home of his friend, oligarch Roman Abramovich.
Leviev then paid 35 million pounds, or 252 million shekels, for the sparkling house, and left his modest home in the city of Bnei Brak.
But London was only a stopover. At the end of 2006, when Africa Israel's stock was floating in fantastical worlds and everything Leviev touched immediately turned into a sparkling diamond, the Leviev family bought nearly 40 dunams in Savyon from Africa Israel, which he controlled. 23 dunams for Lev and Olga Leviev, and another 8 plots for his 8 children. The total purchase price was 61 million shekels. Zviya, the eldest daughter, had arrived in the prestigious settlement several years earlier and paved the way for her parents and siblings.
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The global crisis, and with it the move to London, delayed the plans a bit. Tzvia has since been forced to migrate with her family to Russia, to oversee the huge shopping mall that the company built in Moscow. But construction of the luxurious mansion on Horesh Street in Savyon is slowly being completed, and judging by the frenzy surrounding the construction site, it seems that within a few months Leviev and his family will be able to pack up their belongings in London and return to Israel.
