David Segal :
With a spa, a swimming pool, two heliports and room for 18 guests, the Luna is more
like a floating luxury villa than a yacht. A crew of 50 keeps all nine decks in pristine shape. The lifeboats cost $4 million apiece. Gleaming engines propel the vessel at a maximum speed of 22 knots.
But for now, the Luna isn’t moving. It sits in a dry dock in Dubai at the center of a most expensive divorce case in a British court. In December 2016, a High Court judge ordered Farkhad Akhmedov, a Russian billionaire oligarch who has owned a home in England since the ’90s, to pay the equivalent of $646 million to his ex-wife, Tatiana Akhmedova. He refused, arguing that the couple had been divorced in Russia more than a decade ago.
Unconvinced and unable to enforce his ruling, the judge in April ordered Mr. Akhmedov to hand over the yacht, valued at roughly $500 million, to his ex-wife. It has since been impounded by authorities in Dubai where
With a spa, a swimming pool, two heliports and room for 18 guests, the Luna is more
like a floating luxury villa than a yacht. A crew of 50 keeps all nine decks in pristine shape. The lifeboats cost $4 million apiece. Gleaming engines propel the vessel at a maximum speed of 22 knots.
But for now, the Luna isn’t moving. It sits in a dry dock in Dubai at the center of a most expensive divorce case in a British court. In December 2016, a High Court judge ordered Farkhad Akhmedov, a Russian billionaire oligarch who has owned a home in England since the ’90s, to pay the equivalent of $646 million to his ex-wife, Tatiana Akhmedova. He refused, arguing that the couple had been divorced in Russia more than a decade ago.
Unconvinced and unable to enforce his ruling, the judge in April ordered Mr. Akhmedov to hand over the yacht, valued at roughly $500 million, to his ex-wife. It has since been impounded by authorities in Dubai where
it remained docked for maintenance.
For more than a decade, Russian oligarchs have been parking their families and some chunk of their net worth in England. A deal was implied: The oligarchs got a haven from the pitiless realities of Putin-era Russia, and Britain got an influx of very rich people.
Now some oligarchs are learning that life here has hazards of its own. That goes even for nonresidents like Mr. Akhmedov, who never became a British citizen. Eager to keep British tax collectors away from his money, he limited the number of days he stayed in England to a maximum of 180 a year to 90 days.
In January, he appeared on the “Putin List,” an inventory of business and political elites in Russia, published by the Trump administration. Seven oligarchs – though not Mr. Akhmedov – have since been subject to sanctions.
Even the Luna having a missile detection system, an anti-drone system, bulletproof windows and bombproof doors is a painful to part with.
Nothing is there to protect Mr. Akhmedov from the British justice system. As the nine-figure settlement was gaveled into divorce court history, Mr. Akhmedov began what the judge called a “campaign” to hide his assets “in a web of offshore companies.
Initially, the seizure of the yacht in Dubai sounded like a setback for Mr. Akhmedov. Then, he and lawyers for the family trust that owns the Luna filed a claim that the fate of the yacht should be decided by a local court in Dubai, using Islamic law, known as Shariah, claiming that he is a practicing Muslim and he can get better verdict against a Christian wife in Shariah court.
Mr. Akhmedov has a total of $1.4 billion fortune and Titiana wants her share as she is living poor and needs the money. She said had always wanted to settle the case out of court. Married in 1993 in Moscow they moved to London.
Over the years, he acquired a summer house in the south of France, two helicopters, vintage cars, fine art – by Rothko, Warhol and others – and a $26 million home in an upscale county outside London.
She said she filed for divorce a second time in 2013 – she had rescinded the first petition a decade earlier. In 2014, Mr. Akhmedov acquired the Luna from a friend. Meaaanwhile the attitude of her husband changed and she sued second tine for divorce.
In 2003, Mr. Akhmedov had produced documents to the court to show that the couple had gotten a divorce from a Moscow court three years earlier. Meanwhile Mr. Akhmedov refused to participate in the British divorce case fearing that tensions between Britain and Russia would prevent him from getting a fair trial. He regarded the case as political, part of Britain’s efforts to seize assets from well-off Russians.
On the divorce certificate from the Moscow court Judge Charles Haddon-Cave said the papers were “forged” and that couple had “remained married.
Meanwhile Dubai International Financial Center Courts impounded the vessel.
Dubai Joint Judicial Tribunal in 2016 Mr. Akhmedov contends to get the decision by a local Shariah court to uphold that British court order to transfer ownership of the yacht cannot be enforced in Dubai.
Predicting how the tribunal will rule is not easy Ms. Akhmedova look for a buyer to sell the yacht if the judgment goes to her favor. Mr. Akhmedov will litigate this case until he wins it or the vessel melts into decrepitude.
For more than a decade, Russian oligarchs have been parking their families and some chunk of their net worth in England. A deal was implied: The oligarchs got a haven from the pitiless realities of Putin-era Russia, and Britain got an influx of very rich people.
Now some oligarchs are learning that life here has hazards of its own. That goes even for nonresidents like Mr. Akhmedov, who never became a British citizen. Eager to keep British tax collectors away from his money, he limited the number of days he stayed in England to a maximum of 180 a year to 90 days.
In January, he appeared on the “Putin List,” an inventory of business and political elites in Russia, published by the Trump administration. Seven oligarchs – though not Mr. Akhmedov – have since been subject to sanctions.
Even the Luna having a missile detection system, an anti-drone system, bulletproof windows and bombproof doors is a painful to part with.
Nothing is there to protect Mr. Akhmedov from the British justice system. As the nine-figure settlement was gaveled into divorce court history, Mr. Akhmedov began what the judge called a “campaign” to hide his assets “in a web of offshore companies.
Initially, the seizure of the yacht in Dubai sounded like a setback for Mr. Akhmedov. Then, he and lawyers for the family trust that owns the Luna filed a claim that the fate of the yacht should be decided by a local court in Dubai, using Islamic law, known as Shariah, claiming that he is a practicing Muslim and he can get better verdict against a Christian wife in Shariah court.
Mr. Akhmedov has a total of $1.4 billion fortune and Titiana wants her share as she is living poor and needs the money. She said had always wanted to settle the case out of court. Married in 1993 in Moscow they moved to London.
Over the years, he acquired a summer house in the south of France, two helicopters, vintage cars, fine art – by Rothko, Warhol and others – and a $26 million home in an upscale county outside London.
She said she filed for divorce a second time in 2013 – she had rescinded the first petition a decade earlier. In 2014, Mr. Akhmedov acquired the Luna from a friend. Meaaanwhile the attitude of her husband changed and she sued second tine for divorce.
In 2003, Mr. Akhmedov had produced documents to the court to show that the couple had gotten a divorce from a Moscow court three years earlier. Meanwhile Mr. Akhmedov refused to participate in the British divorce case fearing that tensions between Britain and Russia would prevent him from getting a fair trial. He regarded the case as political, part of Britain’s efforts to seize assets from well-off Russians.
On the divorce certificate from the Moscow court Judge Charles Haddon-Cave said the papers were “forged” and that couple had “remained married.
Meanwhile Dubai International Financial Center Courts impounded the vessel.
Dubai Joint Judicial Tribunal in 2016 Mr. Akhmedov contends to get the decision by a local Shariah court to uphold that British court order to transfer ownership of the yacht cannot be enforced in Dubai.
Predicting how the tribunal will rule is not easy Ms. Akhmedova look for a buyer to sell the yacht if the judgment goes to her favor. Mr. Akhmedov will litigate this case until he wins it or the vessel melts into decrepitude.
