Billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov and his ex-wife Tatiana Akhmedova are settling Britain’s largest property division award of 450 million pounds. He will be paying her around 135 million pounds in cash and other assets to settle. The announcement ends the largest financial dispute that Britain’s divorce courts have ever seen.
From Russia with Love
Tatiana Akhmedova, who is originally from Russia, decided to accept the cash and art settlement, which represents about one-third of the property division award she obtained in 2016. The parties’ settlement agreement ends a very bitter and long-running legal dispute.
The fight for assets has spanned at least nine jurisdictions since a London judge awarded Tatiana some 450 million pounds — amounting to 41% of Farkhad’s assets — in 2016. The Former Wife’s litigation budget in pursuing her settlement was expensive too. According to reports she had to borrow fund from a litigation finance group called Burford Capital Ltd., which stated it will receive $103 million.
“I will burn this moneys rather then will give her”
Farkhad said in a WhatsApp message to his son in March that year.
Florida Property Division
I’ve written about this case in the past along with the subject of property division in Florida many times before. Property division, or equitable distribution as it is called in Florida, is governed by statute and case law.
Generally, courts set apart to each spouse their nonmarital assets and debts, and then distribute the marital assets and debts between the parties.
In dividing the marital assets and debts though, the court must begin with the premise that the distribution should be equal. However, if there is a justification for an unequal distribution, as in the Akhmedov divorce, the court has the authority.
However, the court must base an unequal distribution on certain factors, including: the contribution to the marriage by each spouse; the economic circumstances of the parties, the duration of the marriage, or any interrupting of personal careers or education.
It has been a long-standing rule in Florida that an unequal distribution of marital assets may be justified to compensate for one spouse’s “intentional dissipation, waste, depletion or destruction of marital assets after filing of the petition….”
Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams
The couple met in 1989, marrying four years later and moved to London. The marriage formally ended in late 2014.
A spokesman for her ex-husband Farkhad Akhmedov said:
The intervention in a case over which the English Court should have had no jurisdiction and the involvement of Burford ultimately achieved nothing for Tatiana. Burford and she spent years and millions of pounds on a costly global tour of various jurisdictions in their attempts to seize Luna. Every one of them failed and the yacht remains and will remain in the ownership of Farkhad and the family trusts. Tatiana has ended up with not a penny more than she was offered by her ex-husband six years ago. Farkhad has provided no payment to Burford. Those monies will have to be paid by Tatiana, thus reducing further to her the benefit of a settlement she could have had before the lawyers and financiers got involved.
The Former Wife was awarded a 41.5% share of her ex-husband’s £1 billion-plus fortune in late 2016. But he did not pay and she has spent years in courts in Britain and abroad in a bid to trace and seize his assets.
At one point she hired a team to try to secure her ex-husband’s enormous yacht, Luna, from a Dubai dock, led by former members of the British Special Boat Service – the naval version of the SAS.
Assets separately seized had included the yacht’s private £5million Eurocopter and its £1.5million Torpedo speed boat, customized with a 1965 Ferrari GTO steering wheel. A £40million global express jet had also been taken.
The Luna was sold to Farkhad in 2014 for £225million, has nine decks, space for 52 crew, two helipads, a vast swimming pool and a mini submarine. They are capable of acting as VIP transport and being lifeboats at the same time. Luna also has one of only two multipurpose custom made lifeboat-limousines in the world at a cost of over £2.8m each.
The Daily Mail article is here.