Russian billionaire’s ex-wife seeks enormous divorce settlement
The ex-wife of a Russian billionaire has claimed more than £11 billion from her former husband.
Her husband is estimated to be the fourth richest man in Russia, despite his claims to the contrary. They divorced back in 2014 after 23 years of marriage and three children. She claimed she had been “dumped, betrayed and humiliated” after he began a relationship with an employee 15 years younger than him.
At the time of the divorce, she was awarded 380 million roubles (£5.2 million). This included a payment for her share in the couple’s luxury Moscow apartment as well as three pieces of land in the local area.
But on Tuesday, she filed a lawsuit seeking an additional 849.2 billion roubles (£11.6 billion).
This represents half of her husband’s wealth as well as half of the dividends from his shares in three foreign companies acquired during their marriage.
She insisted that her former husband hid the true extent of his wealth in various offshore companies during their divorce.
However he denied this. He has previously claimed that he is no longer a billionaire but has only a few million left along with a salary of around £370,000 a month.
Pre-trial preparations are expected to begin in June. If the wife is successful, she would receive the largest divorce settlement in the world.
The previous record holder was the $4 billion paid by a French-born American businessman in 1999. Meanwhile, the biggest divorce settlement in British history was recently awarded to the former wife of an energy trader.
She received £453 million, a sum which represented a little over 41 per cent of her former husband’s fortune.