Alimony for oligarch’s ex slashed to CHF564m
Elena Rybolovlev will receive only an eighth of the amount a Swiss court last year ordered her former husband to pay her. The fact that the amount is CHF564 million ($600 million) should make the news more bearable for her.
In May 2014, a Swiss court ordered Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev to pay CHF4,020,555,987.80 in what would have been the biggest divorce settlement in history.
It was an unheard-of amount for Switzerland, but the lawyer for Elena Rybolovlev said that under Swiss law she was entitled to half the fortune Rybolovlev made during their marriage. Most of his fortune was transferred to Cyprus-based trusts in 2008, the year divorce proceedings began.
“One may reasonably presume that Mr Rybolovlev will appeal,” her lawyers said at the time. “But the judgement shows already that, for the Geneva Tribunal of First Instance, 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.”
Sure enough, 48-year-old Rybolovlev, owner of French soccer club Monaco, appealed.
Swiss marriage law
On Thursday, French-language business magazine Bilan reported that the Court of Justice had reduced the amount owed to Elena Rybolovlev to CHF564 million.
The court ruled that, regarding the Cyprus-based trusts, one could not calculate the sum owed to Elena Rybolovlev as though the assets were still held by Dmitry Rybolovlev.
Thus, Bilan noted, in certain cases the provisions of private international law seem to prevail over Swiss marriage law.
“Unlike the verdict at first instance, the judges of the Court of Justice have decided that foreign trusts are subject to the substantive laws of their jurisdiction – namely Cyprus – under the Hague Trust ConventionExternal link,” said Dmitry Rybolovlev’s lawyer.
It was therefore judged that the fortune escaped Geneva marriage law from the moment it was placed in the Cypriot trusts. This explains the difference between CHF564 million and CHF4 billion.
‘Fertiliser king’
The oligarch’s ex-wife had originally demanded $6 billion from the man known as the “fertiliser king”, whose fortune from potash mining once made him one of the world’s richest people.
The couple met as university students in Perm, Russia, and married there in 1987. When divorce proceedings began in 2008, business magazine Forbes estimated his worth at $12.8 billion.
A Geneva court had provisionally frozen Rybolovlev’s assets in Switzerland and abroad, but it may prove difficult for his former wife to obtain the money as Switzerland has no legal aid treaty with Cyprus.
In the United States, Rybolovlev and his elder daughter used trusts to acquire some of the priciest real estate in the country, including a penthouse apartment at Central Park West in New York and a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida.
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