Most expensive divorce in human history

 From around the web More from The Independent The Independent 2 Derry Street London W8 5TT © independent.co.uk Terms & Policies Privacy Policy Code of Conduct EUROPE Dmitry Rybolovlev: World's most expensive
divorce costs Russian billionaire £2.7bn Dmitry Rybolovlev (here pictured with an
unidentified companion) has been ordered to pay
about £2.7bn to his ex-wife ..Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev has been
ordered to pay about £2.7bn to his ex-wife in what
could become the biggest divorce settlement in
history. In papers delivered on Monday to both parties, a
court in Switzerland said Mr Rybolovlev, 47, one
of the owners of French soccer club AS Monaco,
must pay more than 4bn Swiss francs to Elena
Rybolovleva, also 47. The judgment also granted his ex-wife property in
the ski resort of Gstaad worth 130.5m francs
(£86m) and two other buildings in the wealthy
Cologny area of Geneva, where the couple once
lived together. It confirmed her custody of their
13-year-old daughter, Anna. The couple also has an adult daughter, Ekaterina. Ms Rybolovleva’s lawyer Marc Bonnant called it
“the most expensive divorce in history”, an
unheard-of amount for Switzerland. But Mr Rybolovlev's lawyer, Tetiana Bersheda,
said that the judgment's cash order was likely to
be whittled down during the appeal process.
“There will definitely be a new appellate review
and therefore this judgment is not final given the
existence of two levels of appeal in Switzerland,” she said. Elena Rybolovleva A statement by Mr Bonnant and two other lawyers
in the case said the record judgment was “a
complete victory” for their client and that under
Swiss law she was entitled to half the fortune he
made during their marriage. Most of that fortune
was transferred to Cyprus-based trusts in 2005. The three lawyers said Monday's ruling
demonstrated that “no one — not even a Russian
tycoon who put his fabulous fortune into legal
structures such as trusts and offshore companies
— is above the law”. But Mr Rybolovlev's lawyer suggested the
opposite, praising the judgment for “confirming
both the validity of the trusts created by Mr
Rybolovlev and the validity of the asset transfer to
them that occurred long before his wife initiated
divorce proceedings”. His ex-wife had demanded about £3.5bn from the
man known as the “fertilizer king”, whose fortune
from potash mining once made him the world's
79th richest person. He is now ranked 147th on
the Forbes list of billionaires, with an estimated
fortune of £5.2bn. The couple met as university students in Perm,
Russia, and married there in 1987. Divorce
proceedings began in 2008. Mr Rybolovlev and his daughter Ekaterina used
money from the trusts to buy some of the most
expensive properties in the US, including a
penthouse apartment at Central Park West in New
York and a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida.