Wife awarded 584 mln USD by British court in divorce settlement

A British court Thursday ordered a Russian billionaire to pay his wife 584 million U.S. dollars in a divorce settlement.

Divorce law experts in London described it as one of the biggest ever payments to be ordered by a judge in an open court hearing.

The judge, Justice Haddon-Cave, said the couple met and married in Moscow before moving in a home in Surrey in southern England.

He awarded the wife 41.5 percent of the total assets from their marriage.

The judge also made a court ruling preventing the man aged 61 from the Caucasus, and the woman who is in her 40s and was born in eastern Europe, from being identified.

Both have been living in Britain for a number of years.

During the hearing, the court was told that the husband sold shares in a Russian company for 1.3 billion U.S. dollars. He then flats in a luxury London development for their two sons, one for 29 million pounds (37.3 million U.S. dollars) and the other for 7 million pounds (9 million U.S. dollars).

Announcing the award, the judge said the wife had been a housewife and mother to the couple's children.

The husband had argued he had made a special contribution to the generation of wealth, but the judge concluded the man and woman had made equal contributions to the welfare of the family.

The husband had made a sudden decision, said Justice Haddon-Cave, to no longer contest the divorce case. Neither the husband or his wife were in the court to listen to the judge's final ruling. Endit