Updated April 20, 2018 13:17:23

Photo: Luna is fitted with an anti-missile system, a mini-submarine and boasts a 20-metre swimming pool. (Wikimedia: Garitzko)

A Russian billionaire has been ordered by a court in London to hand over a 350-million-pound ($638 million) superyacht to his ex-wife as part of Britain's biggest-ever divorce battle.

Justice Haddon-Cave at the High Court ruled that Farkhad Akhmedov, 62, had used evasive and underhand tactics to keep the yacht beyond the reach of the English courts and avoid paying his wife, Tatiana Akhmedova.

The 115-metre Luna was bought by Mr Akhmedov in 2014 from fellow Russian oligarch and Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich.

The court heard the yacht, currently in Dubai, is the second-largest expedition yacht in the world.

It is fitted with an anti-missile system, has a mini-submarine and boasts a 20-metre swimming pool, the largest of any superyacht in the world.

Mr Akhmedov sold the yacht in December 2014 to an offshore company based in Panama.

But the judge said on Thursday it was clear that company was a "mere cipher" of Mr Akhmedov, and that the sale was a way of keeping the luxury asset out of his wife's reach.

The couple married in 1993 and moved to London where Ms Akhmedova raised their two sons.

In 2016, the court awarded her 453 million pounds ($825 million) because of her "equal contributions to the welfare of the family".

The figure, the largest sum ever awarded for a divorce settlement in Britain, made up 41.5 per cent of Mr Akhmedova's estimated 1.3-billion-pound ($2.37 billion) fortune.

Ms Akhmedova said however he had not paid the money and she was seeking an order preventing him from concealing assets.

Reuters

Topics: law-crime-and-justice, courts-and-trials, united-kingdom, russian-federation

First posted April 20, 2018 09:26:45