My seven-year divorce battle with the £230m godfather of gambling
AS SHE walks to her modest two-bedroom, ground-floor apartment in southern Spain, Susan Kim often gazes up at an imposing mansion nearby – a place she once called home.
As Mrs Victor Chandler, wife of the British betting tycoon, she would sip champagne on the balcony of the £6.6million mansion Los Guirasols, looking out over the Andalusian town of Sotogrande.
Seven years on from her divorce from the charismatic face of the BetVictor TV adverts, Ms Kim is still fighting for a multi-millionpound portion of her ex-husband’s fortune – a claim that Mr Chandler argues is groundless.
Her former husband, 67, is described as ‘the last gentleman of gambling’ but her own view of Victor Chandler is very different.
‘Victor became a monster in my eyes within six months of marrying him – there is no other way to describe it,’ she says, speaking to The Mail on Sunday for the first time about the collapse of her marriage in a last-ditch attempt to win what she believes is rightfully hers.
‘There was a moment when I seemed to have it all – happiness, great wealth and a beautiful home.
‘But going from being Mrs Victor Chandler to not being Mrs Victor Chandler is a long way down.’
The couple met when Mr Chandler travelled to South Korea in 2001. The cigar-smoking betting boss, credited as a pioneer of telephone and online betting, swept Ms Kim off her feet and parachuted her and Jamie, her son from her first marriage, into a life of wealth and comfort in the stunning Spanish countryside.
Several years earlier, Mr Chandler had moved his business interests to Gibraltar for tax reasons.
Ms Kim, 51, recalls champagne parties with the jockey Lester Piggott and weekends at Royal Ascot, where she rubbed shoulders with royalty and celebrities. Yet behind the glamour, she says, her marriage was unravelling. ‘Very early on in our marriage he simply started to change,’ Ms Kim says. ‘The well-groomed, charming man who lavished gifts on me started to change before my eyes. It was as if a switch had been flicked and, within months of us getting married, he became someone else.’ She accuses her exhusband of being controlling and says their marriage lasted as long as it did only for the sake of their children, Billy, now 14, and Jonnie, ten.
By 2009, they were living in separate homes and, when they divorced two years later, Ms Kim received a monthly stipend of £8,200 to cover the family household costs. For years she has argued that she is owed a final settlement of at least £10million from her former husband, whose personal wealth was estimated in the 2018 Sunday Times Rich List at £230million.
She continues to take her legal fight through the Spanish courts. ‘There have been over 20 settlement hearings and sometimes he turns up but I have never seen any compassion in his face,’ she says.
‘I will never understand why he has been so vindictive.’
Mr Chandler declined to comment last night. His lawyers dispute Ms Kim’s financial claim.
‘My charming husband changed before my eyes’