23/07/2011 - By Anil Dawar
A Russian billionaire has been hit with the biggest divorce settlement in history after a judge awarded his ex-wife a payout thought to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
Oil tycoon Boris Berezovsky, 65, agreed to the payout at the High Court in London yesterday, exactly a year after divorcing Galina Besharova.
Although neither side would confirm the settlement figure, judge Mrs Justice Eleanor King hinted at the huge sum involved, saying: ?It does not matter whether the awards are thousands of pounds or hundreds of millions of pounds.?
Although the couple had been married for 18 years and had two children together, they have lived separately for the past 15 years.
It is thought that Ms Besharova, 52, pushed for the divorce because she was tired of reading about her ex-husband and his new girlfriend Elena Gorbunova, 42.
The staggering settlement eclipses the previous highest payout of ?48million that insurance magnate John Charman was told to pay his wife Beverley in 2006. It cements England?s place as the divorce capital of the world. But lawyer Vanessa Lloyd Platt predicted the courts will soon stop making such big awards.
Follow the link to view this article on the Express site: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/260553/Russian-tycoon-pays-hundreds-of-millions-in-record-divorce-deal
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