The lavish furnishings inside home, where the most certainly invested a great deal of money, received more media attention. Gold on the walls, doors, ceilings, mirrors, furniture, and even the toilet.
Kanye West
Kanye West gold toilet seats cost $750,000, but you can afford them when you’re a billionaire like Kanye West (we hope he’s okay with us calling him a billionaire). We all know he likes flashy things, but we also didn’t expect him to want them in the bathroom. Their luxury restrooms arrived at their estate in a 49-foot-tall gold box that was part of a spectacular landing.
Viktor Yanukovych
Viktor Yanukovych, named the most corrupt politician in the world by Transparency International Ukraine in 2017, owned a toilet made of solid gold. Social media was flooded with photos of his claimed toilet, which seemed to be a throne adorned with lions’ skulls. Yanukovych was overthrown and exiled to Russia in 2014. As soon as his guards abandoned his mansion, the media flocked to it to document his lavish lifestyle. Reporters found no gold toilets but an ostrich farm, a golf course, and a ship. It turns out that the photographs weren’t real. In its place, reporters discovered a strange golden loaf of bread. Yanukovych was given this finding as a birthday present by the director of a Ukrainian manufacturer.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan
The opposition leader in Turkey, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, made a sly allusion to Erdogan’s gilded toilet in 2015. Palaces have been erected for the gentlemen of Ankara, jets have been acquired, and Mercedes-Benz automobiles have been bought for you. Kilicdaroglu declared at a rally just before parliamentary elections, “golden seats have been purchased, that’s how you use the bathroom.” The president took offense to this and invited his opponent to the $600 million castle to personally search for the missing golden commode. If Kilicdaroglu found a golden toilet, Erdogan would resign. Erdogan sued the opposition leader for “lying,” and the court ruled that he should not be penalized for expressing political dissent.
Donald Trump
A request to borrow Vincent van Gogh’s Landscape With Snow for the White House was made to the Guggenheim Museum that same year (2017). The museum, however, presented Trump with an alternative: a flushing toilet made of pure gold. America, an 18-karat work by Maurizio Cattelan, was utterly functional and sold for $6 million. More than one hundred thousand people used the restroom at the Guggenheim for a year before it was handed to Trump.
Vladimir Putin
Alexei Navalny, a leader of the Russian opposition who is currently doing time in prison, published a video in January called Putin’s Palace about a mansion worth $1.4 billion that he claims belongs to Putin. (The Kremlin refutes these accusations.) Scenes from the hidden ice rink, pool, theatre, casino, and “aqua-disco” were shown. No, there wasn’t any actual gold in the bathrooms, but there was a toilet brush that looked like it was worth $850. Protests against Putin’s rule in Russia have adopted the emblem of a toilet gold brush. Protesters at January’s massive demonstrations in support of Navalny used them in place of banners. So many of them were put under custody because of this.
