The wife who swears she can’t live without spending £116,000 a year on handbags
GIVEN the copious tears that Christina Estrada shed at the High Court this week, there can be little doubt she is finding her ongoing divorce battle very distressing indeed.
Battling your husband for a £200 million share of his fortune is, of course, a highly distressing matter, inviting a forensic analysis of your finances by eagle-eyed lawyers.
And as revealed during heated courtroom exchanges, 54-year- old Estrada’s spending habits are jaw-dropping indeed.
Aside from the £62 million she says she needs to purchase a home, the former Pirelli model says she needs £1 million each year to dress herself, with her shopping list including £58,000 for two luxury handbags, as well as £23,000 for six ‘casual’ handbags and £35,000 for ten clutch bags.
And that’s just the tip of this very costly iceberg. She is demanding £4,000 for 15 pairs of sunglasses, two sets of ski wear for trips to Gstaad in Switzerland and £26,000 for her mobile phone. She is also seeking £247,000 to book the Presidential Suite at the Hotel Ritz Paris, for an October half-term break she wants to take every year.
Then there’s the £9,400 she needs for the four bottles of face cream she gets through annually, which must surely — at that price — have provided relief for her tear-stained face over the past few months.
But while most will be wondering how on earth a tub of something you slap on your face can cost £2,350 — we shall give more thought to this later on — there are clearly more important matters at stake; not least the sad breakdown of Christina’s 13-year marriage to 61-year-old billionaire Saudi Dr Walid Juffali.
In what has become one of Britain’s biggest ever divorce cases, Juffali has described his exwife’s application for ‘ financial relief ’ as ‘excessive’ after his initial offer of £37 million was flung back in his face.
He has been receiving treatment for cancer in a Swiss clinic — a fact which apparently makes Estrada’s desire to reach a financial settlement even more pressing.
Aside from the enormous sum of money she is demanding, she claims he has kept a £10 million blue diamond ring which rightfully belongs to her.
As Estrada’s lawyer put it so delicately this week: ‘If the worst comes to the worst and he is dying, it is going to be a hopeless task to get the ring back.’ A sorry state of affairs then, as indicated by Estrada’s frequent bangings on the table in court this week, not to mention her constant demands for ‘comfort breaks’. She said: ‘I’m very exhausted. Very tired,’ breaking down in tears at one point during proceedings.
So is she really, as she claims, motivated by a desire to ‘stand up for women’? Or is she, as her ex-husband’s lawyers counter, simply ‘greedy’?
At one stage, the court heard she had rejected a £6.5 million property in Belgravia because she might have to share a floor with her staff.
She said that a £55 million property in Eaton Square, with a pool and a hot tub, would need another £6.5 million to be decorated to her taste. Another was dismissed as ‘too small to accommodate our staff’.
She also wants £4.4 million for a house in the country and around half-a-million pounds for five cars — three in London and two in Beverly Hills, to be kept at the home her ex-husband bought her following the end of their marriage.
Estrada, who has turned up in court each day clad in Chanel and Louis Vuitton, left those present in little doubt about how she sees herself.
At one point, she dramatically announced: ‘I am Christina Estrada. I was a top international model. I have lived this life. This is what I am accustomed to.’
So who is this age-defying ravenhaired beauty, and why on earth does she need so much to live on?
One thing is very clear: ever since she stripped naked on a Seychelles beach for the 1993 edition of the Pirelli calendar, American- born Estrada has enjoyed a standard of living beyond the wildest dreams of those she grew up with.
SHE spent her early years in the middle-class suburb of Bellevue, Seattle, where she lived with her mother Chantal and sister Mischa before moving to London in 1989.
The relative unknown was soon romantically linked to Prince Andrew, recently separated from Sarah Ferguson and regarded as London’s most eligible playboy.
Formula 1 boss Flavio Briatore was another boyfriend.
In 1994 she became engaged to South African casino magnate and hotel billionaire Sol Kerzner, who is 27 years her senior — not to mention a foot shorter.
He is said to have proposed on Valentine’s Day with a diamond ring so large that it had to be kept in a bank vault.
But despite this auspicious start, the engagement dragged on for six years before Kerzner cruelly passed Christina over for her one-time friend, the equally long- legged model Heather Murphy.
The late artist and self- styled dandy Sebastian Horsley once wrote about his own dalliance with Estrada, which must have taken place at around the time her engagement ended.
‘She was,’ he said, ‘about as wild as a pension plan. Banging on about yoga, vegetarianism, abstinence and other diseases of the soul.
‘ There is, after all, a certain spiritual calm that comes from having money in the bank.
‘And girl did she like money . . . I can’t imagine why, but I was dumped for another billionaire.’
Indeed, Estrada was soon being wooed by the very eligible Juffali, who has a PhD in neuroscience and is chairman and heir of EA Juffali and Brothers, one of Saudi Arabia’s most successful companies with interests in banking, insurance and telecommunications.
Her relationship with Juffali took her life of luxury to a whole new level. Travelling by private jet, he once took her to Cannes film festival where they were dinner guests on the yacht of luxury jeweller Chopard.
Between courses, Juffali presented Estrada with a gift box containing a diamond necklace and earrings — among many extravagant items.
There was, however, the small matter of his first wife, Basma AlSulaiman, to deal with.
She is said to have given her errant husband divorce papers as he drove out of the gates of the family estate near Windsor, Berkshire, with Estrada beside him in the car.
Al- Sulaiman, who has three children with Juffali, received £40 million following the end of their 24-year marriage — a drop in the ocean compared with the sum now being demanded.
MEANWHILE, Juffali and Estrada married in a Muslim ceremony in Dubai in September 2001, and she gave birth to their daughter, who cannot be named for legal reasons, the following year.
Her life as Mrs Juffali was certainly comfortable. Aside from the £100 million Bishopsgate House in Surrey where she based herself and her daughter, the couple shared a London flat, a coastal retreat near Dartmouth, Devon, a house in Gstaad, Switzerland and a 15th- century waterfront palazzo in Venice.
There was also the Juffali family’s marble palace compound in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah, which over the years has hosted the likes of Lady Thatcher, John Major and President George Bush Sr.
But it wasn’t all parties and private jets. Aside from managing her lavish homes and domestic staff, Estrada worked tirelessly for the Red Cross.
She helped set up the charity Films Without Borders, which provides film-making workshops for teenagers living in war zones, as well as gaining a master’s degree in mass communications from Leicester University in 2007.
To observers it must have seemed that Estrada was living the dream. Certainly, those who attended the ‘surprise’ three- day 50th birthday party thrown for her in the Arabian desert by her husband in 2012 were bowled over by his generosity.
Guests, including Britain’s richest woman, Kirsty Bertarelli, and her Swiss billionaire husband, Ernesto, were sent gold- crested invitations and flown to Dubai on a fleet of private jets, before being transported to the luxurious Qasr Al Sarab Desert Resort.
Socialite Tamara Beckwith, a friend of Estrada’s, described it as ‘the most unreal fairytale’.
But if her 50th birthday was the
happiest of events, the cruellest blow lay just around the corner.
For her husband had already embarked on an affair with Lebanese model and TV presenter Loujain Adada, who is 35 years his junior — and less than half Estrada’s age. Under Saudi law, men can take up to four wives, and just months after Estrada’s party, he married Adada in a lavish ceremony in Venice.
She wore a Karl Lagerfeld gown that cost £190,000 and a diamondencrusted necklace worth £1.9 million. It didn’t take long for Estrada to find out about the marriage.
Adada, who was born into a wealthy Sunni Muslim family in Beirut, ensured that everyone knew about it, posting photographs of the wedding and her new life as the third Mrs Juffali on Instagram. In one shot, she is seen posing in a short skirt and black heels in a £135,000 pink Bentley sports car, a gift from Juffali. ‘Finally got my pink Bentley sports car I’m so happy it’s the most beautiful present from my hubby!’ she gushes in the caption. Now 25, she has since had two children with Juffali. Understandably, Estrada launched divorce proceedings in the summer of 2013, but before the papers were served, Juffali divorced her himself, using the simple Muslim law which requires a man only to say ‘I divorce you’ three times. In December 2014, she was given leave by the High Court to sue her Juffali for a share of his fortune, sparking what could be one of the biggest divorce payouts in British history. There was a minor hiccup when her legal team discovered Juffali had suddenly been appointed as the permanent representative of St Lucia to the International Maritime Organisation, a post which conveniently carries diplomatic immunity from civil action in British courts. But this attempt to avoid the courts was described as ‘spurious’ by Mr Justice Hayden earlier this year. He ruled that as a permanent UK resident, Juffali was indeed liable to action in Britain, lifting the lid on this riveting saga of marital strife, infidelity and excess. And so we return to the mind- boggling matter of the £2,350 face cream. Investigations by the Mail this week have unearthed several brands which would not look out of place on Estrada’s dressing table, but finding a cream that costs that much is no easy task. Even the celebrated Creme de la Mer cream costs only £1,340 for a 500ml pot. Guerlain do a £ 900 four- vial set of their Orchidee Imperiale Treatment, but that doesn’t seem to be quite expensive enough either. In 2012, Japanese beauty line Cle de Peau Beaute launched a ‘lifting and tightening’ cream, which at £8,500 for a 50g jar, is five times more expensive per gram than gold, but that seems a tad too pricey even for Ms Estrada. Whether or not the High Court believes she is entitled to such luxury remains to be seen. Judgment in this sorry case has been reserved until July 8. Only then will Juffali find out if he must continue paying for whatever miracle cream his ex- wife is using on her ever-youthful face.