(Bloomberg) -- Russian billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov's multimillion dollar British divorce has been laid bare more than a year after a British judge awarded one of the largest divorce payouts in U.K. history.
He was ordered to pay Tatiana Akhmedova 453.5 million pounds ($643 million), or 41 percent of his assets, in December 2016. She hasn't gotten anything, according to documents filed by her lawyers for an appellate hearing Wednesday.
Bankers and other financial professionals are often at the center at some of the biggest U.K. divorces. London courts have gained a reputation as being a more sympathetic place to play out high-stakes cases, as judges generally order a 50-50 split of assets, giving equal weight to the work of a wealth creator and a homemaker.
The ruling wasn't made public until May 2017, with their identities kept out in accordance with family court rules to protect children and what's deemed to be confidential financial information. If it's appealed, though, the anonymity rules don't apply and their names are made public.
Art Collection
Farkhad Akhmedov, who refused to take part in the U.K. trial and moved back to Russia, has allegedly moved his substantial modern art collection, valued at 90.5 million pounds, to Lichtenstein, and moved the majority of his liquid securities -- worth around $600 million -- to a Lichtenstein bank from a Swiss firm, his wife said in the court documents.
The appeal hearing Wednesday is dealing with the husband's solicitor's evidence during the trial and whether he should have to divulge certain financial information. Farkhad Akhmedov didn't respond to questions placed to him through a spokeswoman.
Lawyers for the solicitor said in court documents that the original ruling "went far beyond anything that was justified or permissible but instead had espoused the cause of Ms. Akhmedova," alleging that "all proper judicial restraint seems to have been abandoned."
Akhmedov wasn't represented at the trial or in the Court of Appeal.
The couple met in 1989, marrying four years later and moved to London where the wife has lived with the children ever since, according to the legal arguments and the 2016 ruling. The marriage ended in late 2014.
Contempt
“Instead of attending” the final divorce hearing, the husband “took extravagant steps to make himself judgment proof,” her lawyers said in the documents. She has “to date received nothing from” him and he's “flagrantly in contempt of court,” they said.
In 2012 OAO Novatek, Russia's second-biggest natural gas producer, agreed to buy a 49 percent stake in OAO Gazprom's Nortgas production unit owned by Akhmedov for $1.38 billion.
Farkhad Akhmedov, who is in his early 60s, was ordered to hand over an Aston Martin and the modern art collection as part of the 2016 divorce settlement. The judge said that the total marital pot was just under 1.1 billion pounds.
Akhmedov, who buys Soviet-era paintings and owns a large collection of Azerbaijani art, paid $46.5 million for an Abstract Expressionist painting by Mark Rothko in 2015. “They depict the Soviet era I grew up in, which will never be repeated.”
--With assistance from Alex Sazonov and Irina Reznik
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeremy Hodges in London at jhodges17@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Christopher Elser, Peter Chapman
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.
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