Hugh Laurie’s jungle lair… and the real-life corruption scandal even darker than The Night Manager’s plot
It is the fabulous Colombian jungle lair where The Night Manager’s notorious arms dealer Richard Roper, played by Hugh Laurie, concealed himself after faking his own death.
But as millions prepare to enjoy tonight’s thrilling finale of the second season of the hit BBC1 spy drama, The Mail on Sunday can reveal the house where MI6 spook Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) finds his old nemesis has a real-life backstory worthy of any political Hollywood blockbuster.
The house, Casa Finca Cactus, a magnificent estate 90 miles south-west of the Colombian capital Bogota, has played host to a real-life arms dealer – French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine – who was at the centre of a corruption scandal involving aides of the disgraced former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and £1.8million in secret back-payments.
The seven-bedroom hacienda was built amid lush forests teeming with wildlife by French businessman Thierry Gaubert, and proved the perfect location for The Night Manager’s Roper to conduct his dodgy dealings.
But whether this was true in real life for Gaubert, who was one of Sarkozy’s closest friends, remains unclear.
But what is known is that Gaubert, who was married to Princess Helene of Yugoslavia, was jailed for two years in 2020 for his role in a scandal involving kickbacks from a deal to sell submarines to Pakistan in the 1990s.
Gaubert, along with five other men – including Takieddine – were found guilty of participating in the ‘Karachi affair’, which involved 2 million euros being siphoned off from legal commissions and sent back to France via intermediaries.
Some of the money was allegedly used to fund ex-French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur’s failed 1995 presidential bid. At the time of the deal, Sarkozy – who was briefly jailed last year for a separate criminal conspiracy relating to millions of euros of illicit funds from late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi – was Mr Balladur’s budget minister. He faced legal scrutiny, but no charges, over the scandal.
Casa Finca Cactus is an estate 90 miles south-west of the Colombian capital Bogota
Thierry Gaubert, pictured with ex-wife Helen, was jailed for his role in the Karachi arms deal scandal
The 28-year-old former Victoria’s Secret model Camila Morrone plays smart and sassy businesswoman Roxana Bolanos in the show
But Gaubert, now 74, was snared after his then-estranged wife secretly recorded their calls for French police.
In them, she talked to Gaubert about offshore bank accounts named after the Cactus estate, and spoke of him bringing back ‘bags of cash’ from Switzerland and handing them over to Nicolas Bazire, the best man at Sarkozy’s wedding and Mr Balladur’s presidential campaign manager.
It is unclear whether producers for The Night Manager had any idea about the house’s provenance when they rented it for three months in the summer of 2024 for filming.
It first appears in the show in a cliffhanger at the end of episode three when Roper – who appeared to have been assassinated at the start of the opening episode – was spotted by Pine in the sprawling hacienda.
The house is no longer owned by Gaubert as it was sold 14 years ago to property developer Carlos Diaz. It is now available to rent for around £450 a night and has been used for filming Colombian soap operas and children’s TV show Dora the Explorer.
A woman who gave her name only as Maria, but is understood to be Carlos Diaz’s daughter-in-law, said: ‘The producers did general improvements to the house, painted parts, brought in furniture and artwork.’
That included painting the property’s magnificent entryway – topped with a bell tower – from burnt ochre to sunflower yellow.
The crew, including Laurie and Hiddleston, stayed in hotels and rental properties during filming.
