Ex-wife in £53m divorce deal victory

The award to the 48-year-old woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, includes a lump sum of £38m.

Details of the case have been made public in an anonymised judgment by Mrs Justice Eleanor King in London.

The case involves a Russian husband and wife who have lived in England since 2005 and have two children together.

They lived a “lavish lifestyle” and their family home in central London was bought for £3.8m.

The couple married in 1991, but she divorced him in Russia in 2009 after 17 years of marriage.

They met in 1987 in the factory where they both worked. The husband was a telephone technician and the wife worked in the cultural department.

The woman sought orders at the High Court relating to a number of properties and also to a lump sum, which the judge said the ex-wife “will attempt to enforce in other jurisdictions”.

Announcing her decision, the judge said: “The case has been a fantastic charade with the husband a shady puppet master in the background.

“At fabulous cost – £1.4m and counting – those representing the wife have crossed and re-crossed the globe in an attempt to trace the husband’s assets, every penny of which has been acquired during the course of the marriage.”

The judge said the QC representing the wife during the hearing earlier this year had put the assets in the case – “at least those assets his legal team have been able to trace in the absence of any proper disclosure by the husband” – at about £107m.

Of that figure some £91.6m is represented by 11 commercial properties in Russia, with the remainder of the “identified wealth” being held in eight English properties worth together an estimated £14m.

The judge ruled: “I am satisfied that all the family’s wealth was created during the course of the marriage.”

She said: “The wife does not seek an order in excess of 50 per cent of the known assets to reflect the overwhelming likelihood that even yet the court does not know the full extent of the husband’s wealth.”

Mrs Justice King said her decision would give the wife £53.5m, but added that this was “before what I very much fear will be the very substantial costs of enforcement”.

The judge said: “In my judgment this is a case where, notwithstanding the formidable challenges for the wife in enforcing a lump sum order, it would be iniquitous if the husband was permitted, by virtue of his appalling litigation misconduct, to drive the court into an order which is substantially less than that which by virtue of the sharing principle, she would otherwise receive.”