How to bankroll an oligarch’s divorce, and cracking shell companies
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DIVORCE CASE
The news may be grim elsewhere, but there’s always someone worse off than yourself. We have an update from the grotesque London divorce proceedings that is Akhmedova v Akhmedov.
Tracing this legal battle to its start is long-winded (a little like trying to work out why Brexit is still happening), but it has expanded over the last four years to take in multiple shell companies, jurisdictions, yachts, paintings, which all add together to make a protracted legal mess that threatens to rival something born of Charles Dickens’ imagination. The key elements of the battle are that
- It involves the largest financial judgment in favor of a wife in English history (£453,576,152.00 ordered to Tatiana Akhmedova in 2016), which is 41.5 percent of Farkhad Akhmedov’s assets.
- The husband has paid over only a fraction of that (plus, apparently, a rusty helicopter).
Say what you like about the British tabloids, but they do adore a messy feud between rich people, and the Daily Mail was in court for this week to hear from the Akhmedovs’ son Temur.