Couple involved in Britain’s biggest divorce award who cannot be identified due to legal reasons, as wife, 44, may have requested anonymity over fears for her safety in a case involving such huge sums. Judge’s concerns for her security may have overridden the principle of open justice in this case.
Biggest UK Divorce Award, Judge ordered Husband to Pay £453 Millions to Ex-Wife
Husband, 61, a former London oil and gas trader, has been told to hand over £453 million to his estranged wife and mother of his two children. He concluded the woman should get a 41.5 per cent share of a fortune totalling just over £1bn.
The man is 61, came from the Caucasus, and had worked as a London oil and gas trader before building up a fortune in the Russian energy business. The woman comes from eastern Europe but has been a British citizen since 2000.
The pair had met in 1989 while she was studying in Moscow, where they married four years later. Couple have two sons now aged 24 and 21, moved to London in 1993 and had lived together in Surrey, where she brought up the children without the help of a nanny.
In 2013 he bought his children flats in a luxury London development costing £29 million and £7.2 million.
The woman had been a housewife and mother to the couple’s now grown-up sons, at their home in Surrey. The judge in the case rejected claims by the husband, a 61-year-old who had showered his wife with jewellery, credit cards and a private plane, that he was rich before the marriage and that he had made a “special contribution” to the creation of wealth.
The judge concluded the man and woman had made “equal contributions to the welfare of the family. The woman was not in court to hear the judge award her the huge sums.
The award, which followed a private hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London. Is thought to be the biggest made by a UK divorce court.
Original News Source: The Telegraph