Keith Vaz last night could not fully explain how he was able to pay almost £400,000 in cash for the flat where he allegedly entertained two rent boys.

The millionaire MP purchased the two-bedroom property earlier this year without the assistance of a mortgage. Land Registry documents show he is the sole owner.

The sparsely-furnished apartment is a ten-minute walk from the £2.2million five-bedroom house he shares with his wife.

In June, Mr Vaz put down £387,500 in cash to buy the flat – more than four times his £89,951 salary as a senior backbench MP.

'Sex Flat': This is the block of luxury flats where Keith Vaz allegedly met two male escorts

Confusion: The Mail spoke to the occupants of the Uppingham Road house the MP says is about to be sold - the family seemed unaware of any sale

Explanation: Mr Vaz, pictured with his wife Maria holding son Luke, said the loan on his new flat would be repaid once Mr Vaz’s house on Uppingham Road in Leicester – which he inherited from his mother Merlyn, right, who died in 2003

Last night the explanation of how he afforded it begged more questions than answers.

His lawyer Mark Stephens said the property had been bought with the help of a ‘personal loan’.

Asked if this loan was from a friend, or a bank, Mr Stephens replied it was a ‘traditional lender’.

Scandal: This is the door of the flat where Mr Vaz is accused of paying men for sex

He said the loan would be repaid once Mr Vaz’s house on Uppingham Road in Leicester – which he inherited from his mother who died in 2003 – had been sold. ‘It has been on the market for three months and has been sold subject to contract,’ said Mr Stephens.

He said the Labour MP had waited to sell the house, 13 years after his mother died, to get the ‘best price’.

The Mail spoke to the occupants of the Uppingham Road house, a family who seemed unaware of any sale. They said they moved in two months ago and had a one-year tenancy, paying £750 a month via an agency.

When this was put to Mr Stephens, he said the current occupants were definitely leaving in three months and there was no agreement in place for them to stay another 12 months.

The Mail was unable to find any estate agent that had advertised the property for sale, and a check of Land Registry documents still show Mr Vaz as the owner, although it can take several weeks for official records to be updated. It remains unclear why Mr Vaz opted for a ‘personal loan’ to buy his new apartment in London, rather than a mortgage.

Family home: This is the detached house owned by Mr Vaz and his wife Maria in Middlesex

Neighbours of the new flat, in a block containing 20 apartments built by Barratt, said that they had never seen the MP.

One said: ‘The flats have only just gone up and they’re pretty expensive so it’s hard to believe that something like that would happen here.’

A ten-minute walk from the flat, past a Tesco and a McDonald’s, is the Vaz family’s large detached home in Stanmore, Middlesex.

Keith Vaz was caught meeting two Eastern European male prostitutes, believed to be Poles, for sex

It is jointly owned by the MP and his wife Maria Fernandes. They purchased it for £1.15million in 2005 and have a mortgage with First Direct bank.

Mr Vaz’s complex finances have long been the subject of scrutiny. The Cambridge-educated socialist once had half a million pounds in the bank, leading Scotland Yard detectives who probed his finances to suggest the money was of a ‘suspicious nature’.

Mr Vaz has bought and sold a string of properties in London and his Leicester constituency.

He has always strenuously denied any wrongdoing and has never faced any criminal charges over the money, which he said was ‘not suspicious in any way’ and explained by a house sale and ‘a drawdown of equity’. His MP’s salary is £74,926 and he receives a £15,025 top-up as a select committee chairman.

On the MPs’ register of interests, he declares occasional outside income from writing newspaper articles or making TV appearances.

In 2012, it emerged he held almost £500,000 in a series of mystery bank accounts.

He had seven or eight mortgages between 1996 and 2001, at one stage juggling arrangements from four different lenders at once.

In October 2008, Mr Vaz was alleged to have made mortgage payments totalling £26,500 – more than seven times higher than his income as a backbench MP. At the time, when banks typically lent only about three to four times a buyer’s earnings, this was £45,066 a year, and his wife ran a small firm of solicitors, reportedly earning an estimated £60,000 a year.

Intimate: Keith Vaz with one of the Eastern European escorts at his £390,000 flat in north London

In June, Mr Vaz put down £387,500 in cash to buy his flat – more than four times his £89,951 salary as a senior backbench MP

Scotland Yard examined seven high street bank accounts belonging to Mr Vaz and his wife. There is no suggestion that she has ever done anything wrong.

Detectives found that over a six-year period, almost £500,000 was apparently deposited in the MP’s accounts – in addition to his salary between 1996 and 2001, which varied from £43,860 to £82,697.

In one HSBC account, £28,959 in cash was paid in during a single year. One payment was made into a personal account by Mapesbury Communications Ltd, a firm run by Mr Vaz’s wife.

In the MPs’ expenses scandal, exposed in 2009, it emerged Mr Vaz had ‘flipped’ his designated second home from his London flat to his Leicester constituency office. This was not illegal, but he was asked to pay back a four-figure sum.