Banker’s ex-wife wants £5.5m despite family fortune
FAMILY wealth should be taken into account when determining a divorce settlement, the Court of Appeal has heard.
A former Goldman Sachs banker is arguing that he should not have to pay his former wife £5.5million to buy a new home because her industrialist father is “remarkably wealthy”.
Hossam Radwan, 46, conceded he was a rich man himself, but told judges he was “much, much poorer” than his former father-in-law, Youssef Alireza, a member of one of Saudi Arabia’s oldest business dynasties.
Mr Radwan split from his wife of 14 years, 38-year-old Hayat Alireza, with whom he has three children, in 2013. When they divorced, Mr Radwan was ordered to gave his ex-wife £2million, plus the right to stay in their marital home next to the Royal Albert Hall in Knightsbridge, London.
Refusing her a greater settlement, a divorce judge said Miss Alireza was likely to inherit a vast fortune – potentially more than £100million – when her father died. Appealing against the decision, the stay-at-home mother says the £5 million penthouse apartment, which overlooks the concert venue and Kensington Gardens, is too small and it is “unfair” that her elderly father is expected to look after her.
Robert Peel QC, her barrister, said: “There is no principle of law that a wife should become the responsibility of her birth family upon divorce.”
Upon their divorce, Miss Alireza accepted £2 million to give her an income for 14 years, but said she wanted another £5.5million so she could buy a bigger property but then “trade down” to give her money to live on when the £2 million ran out. At the High Court in 2015, Mrs Justice Roberts approved the husband’s offer of £2million, plus the right to live in the flat until her father dies, with the use of a next-door apartment as an overspill for three years.
Miss Alireza said the judge was wrong to take into account her father’s wealth when making the order. Under Saudi law, she will receive a fifth of his estate, put at more than £500 million, when he dies and will be a “multi-millionaire in her own right”, the judge found.
But Miss Alireza says her father, who is in his 70s and whose fortune derives from one of Saudi Arabia’s oldest business dynasties, could live for many years yet. Contesting the appeal, Richard Todd QC, for Mr Radwan, said the husband may be rich, but is “much, much poorer” than his ex-wife’s family.
“This was a case of a husband from a wealthy Saudi family and a wife from an extremely wealthy Saudi family,” he said.
Despite being repeatedly asked to do so, Miss Alireza had failed to disclose the likely size of the inheritance she will receive, he added.