This is the luxury Spanish villa Britain’s richest plumber has escaped to with his new girlfriend in a bid to avoid Labour’s ‘tax grab’.
Charlie Mullins, 72, said he was loving his ‘magnificent’ new life on the Costa del Sol with his partner, Malak, as he gave an exclusive tour of his four-bedroom mansion just 200 yards from the beach.
The Pimlico Plumbers founder, who made £145million when he sold his firm in 2021, bought the Marbella property for £2m seven years ago, meaning it is likely worth far more today.
The father-of-four – who was previously engaged to 32-year-old singer Raquel Reno – relocated to the lavish home last year amid fears Chancellor Rachel Reeves would increase inheritance tax following Labour’s general election victory.
He said he was fed up of being ‘ripped off’ after paying £25m in tax over the years and that he would not return unless Nigel Farage’s Reform takes power. He recently revealed that he had put his £12m London penthouse on the market.
The sumptuous four-storey palace boasts ensuite bedrooms on each floor, as well as a pool, a rooftop currently being converted into a bar area and a basement games room kitted out with memorabilia he has collected over the years.
The guest room on the top floor features a baseball bat by the bed ‘for the burglars’, Mullins freely admits, while the terraces are decked out with sensual sculptures and even a little brass statue of an elf.
The entrepreneur said he now spends his time between Mijas Costa, just up the road from Marbella, and Dubai – ‘my favourite place in the world’ – with Malak.
‘The plan is to do eight months of the year here in Spain, a couple in Dubai and one to two months maximum in the UK,’ he told Mail Online from his villa.
He hosts friends in his bar by the swimming pool – ‘when you’ve got a pool and a free bar you get a lot of visitors’ – or in the games room, replete with a signed Messi shirt, piano and guitar collection.
The ex-boxer keeps busy with a personal trainer in the gym ‘four or five times a week’, and when he nips out and about he tends to take his purple Rolls Royce.
‘Either that or the four-by-four Bentley,’ he said during a tour of the villa. Or the Porsche.’
Mullins, who heads up a family of 11 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, also owns a seven seater Land Rover for when ‘the kids are in town.’
Meanwhile, he has purchased land in the hills above Marbella ‘near where Antontio Banderas has a villa’ in order to build a staggering 10-bedroom mansion.
He added: ‘The lifestyle down here is magnificent. With the wonderful weather you can get out in the daytime a lot more and hit the restaurants, which I would say are better than in London.
‘The social life is probably 10 times better than the UK because wherever you go you know people, and if you don’t know them you get to know them.
‘It’s so friendly here, the people are so inviting and there’s just more joy about. I could go out now and just go for breakfast around the cafe and come back at 12 o’clock tonight, that’s how friendly it is.’
He is even making headway among the locals, having got to know a number of Spaniards through his property developments.
When asked if there is anything he misses about the UK, he said: ‘Nothing at all, apart from maybe pie and mash and liquor.’
On whether he would consider returning to his homeland, he added: ‘If we can get the current government out – and I don’t think they’ll last the full term, I think they’ll be begging to get out because of the damage they’ve done.’
‘And if Reform and Nigel Farage got in, then I’ll be back there. I’ll be opening up more businesses and creating jobs and being part of the setup again.’
The south-London native added he needed to escape from all the ‘doom and gloom’ of Britain.
‘People attack me for leaving the country and not being patriotic, but I am patriotic – I’ve paid nearly £25m in tax over the years.
‘I’m just fed up of being ripped off, whether it’s with shopping or inheritance tax or leaving the UK, they come up with a way to make you pay twice.
‘It’s like being in a restaurant, you pay your bill and all of a sudden as you’re leaving the waiter says to you you’ve got to pay again.’
Mullins went on to slam the Labour government ‘for supporting people who don’t contribute, and penalising entrepreneurs and wealth creators; the people who create jobs and train up the workforce.’
‘It’s not about avoiding taxes,’ he insists. ‘It’s about what this government spends it on, wasting £8m a day to feed and house asylum seekers.’
Mullins called paying £23m in tax when he sold Pimlico Plumbers in 2021 a ‘very painful amount of money to handover’ and he slammed inheritance tax as ‘absolute nonsense’.
‘I’m going to sell up completely in London because of the inheritance tax, as the government would nick 40 or 50 percent of a £12m property, and I’m not prepared to pay tax twice on my assets.’
However, he announced his plans to run as councillor for the Reform party in upcoming local elections in the Bermondsey, Lambert or Southwark area of London.
‘I’ll do anything I can to help get Reform in, and Labour out.’ In the meantime, Mullins is focusing on helping his sons with the new family business WeFix as non-executive chairman – off the payroll ‘so that I don’t give the Labour government any more money’ – and enjoying life in the Spanish sun.
It comes as a new analysis found that the exodus of millionaires from Britain last year was equivalent to losing half-a-million average taxpayers.
Figures from New World Wealth, a global analytics firm, showed 10,800 liquid millionaires – who hold more than $1million in liquid assets – left the UK in 2024.
In their analysis of the research, the Adam Smith Institute found each of these millionaires would have been paying at least £393,957 in income tax.
This equates to the same income tax take as 49 average taxpayers – who each have an average income tax bill of £8,048, the think tank said.
It means – due to the exodus of millionaires – the Treasury is now facing a shortfall in income tax revenue equivalent to the income tax taken from 528,000 average taxpayers, the analysis added.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ tax-hiking Budget was blamed for millionaires abandoning Britain, including Labour’s plans to abolish the non-dom tax regime.
The Adam Smith Institute said the UK had an ‘increasingly hostile attitude’ towards wealth creation and warned average families could face even higher tax bills to fund public services.
The Tories claimed entrepreneurs and businesses were fleeing Britain ‘in droves’ under Labour, who they accused of overseeing a ‘tepid bath of decline’.