RE: Bargain BUR23 Nov 2020 04:42
A High Court judge has accused an oligarch’s City financier son of destroying evidence in a long-running row over Britain’s biggest divorce settlement.
Lawyers and forensic experts for the Russian woman, who was awarded £453 million, raided her son’s flat in London last month in a further twist in the four-year saga.
Tatiana Akhmedova obtained a search order from the High Court that allowed a nine-strong team to search the £30 million Hyde Park flat of her son, Temur Akhmedov.
Representatives for Ms Akhmedova — who won the court-ordered payout in her divorce from Farkhad Akhmedov, a billionaire oil and gas tycoon — said she was trying to establish that her 27-year-old son had assisted his father in hiding assets worth millions.
Ms Akhmedova, 52, has spent much of the time since the original ruling trying to enforce the divorce award against Mr Akhmedov, who is understood to be close to President Putin.
At one stage Ms Akhmedova attempted to force her former husband to hand over his £350 million superyacht, MV Luna, which was originally constructed for Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea football club owner.
Rulings from Mrs Justice Knowles have just been published after the flat raid. The judge said that she ordered the search because the son had not “delivered up” electronic devices that might contain evidence relevant to the dispute. Mrs Justice Knowles said that “all his electronic devices, including the only desktop computer which he admitted to owning, were said by him to have been lost in transit from France to London when he was seeking to comply with the forensic examination order”.
A nine-strong team searched Temur Akhmedov’s £30 million flat after his mother obtained a court order
A nine-strong team searched Temur Akhmedov’s £30 million flat after his mother obtained a court order
She authorised the raid because “Temur himself says that he has destroyed the entirety of the relevant electronic documents”. She added that there was a possibility that the documents could be recovered from devices at the London flat and therefore it was “appropriate in my view to take steps to ensure that this is done”.
The judge criticised the son for “his continuing apparent failure to disclose relevant documents which are likely to be of vital importance to key issues in the proceedings; his admitted deliberate destruction of relevant documents; his apparent concealment of electronic devices; and his repeated failure to comply with the terms of this court’s orders”.
She said this was likely “to cause serious damage to the wife in prejudicing her ability to pursue the proceedings and obtain the judgment to which she claims to be entitled”.
In the ruling, Mrs Justice Knowles said she was “satisfied that there is clear evidence that Temur has in his possession incriminating documents” and that there was “a real possibility” that he would destroy them if the flat had not been searched.
Sources close to the son said that the ten-ho
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