Oligarch’s ex-wife has luxury flat seized after defaulting on loan
THE ex-wife of a Russian oligarch who was hit with sanctions over Ukraine has had her £8.7million London apartment repossessed after failing to pay the mortgage.
Arkady Rotenberg, 69, a billionaire gas pipe baron and childhood friend and former judo partner of Vladimir Putin, has been battling Natalia Rotenberg, his 40-year-old ex-wife, in British divorce courts for the past six years over a £27million mansion in Surrey.
In December 2020, he was hit with personal financial sanctions by the UK, because he had “financially benefited from Russian decision makers responsible for the annexation of Crimea or the destabilisation of eastern Ukraine”.
During the current invasion of Ukraine, other members of Mr Rotenberg’s family have also been sanctioned.
A judge has now ordered his ex-wife’s flat – with views over Buckingham Palace and the royal parks – to be repossessed after hearing that “no payments at all” have been made on the £1.6million loan used to buy the property, as the sanctions created a “turbulent time in the lives” of the former couple.
One of the world’s richest men, Mr Rotenberg and his brother, Boris, own the largest construction company for gas pipelines and electrical power supply lines in Russia, with a fortune estimated by Forbes in 2017 at $2.5billion (about £2billion).
The couple’s UK base was a £27 million mansion at Upper Ribsden in Windlesham, Surrey, which had a swimming pool, cinema, staff quarters and underground garage.
In 2019, a High Court divorce judge ruled that the house go to Ms Rotenberg. But last year, Court of Appeal judges said it had not been proved that the house was Mr Rotenberg’s to give, as it is owned by an offshore company.
As the fight raged, Ms Rotenberg moved to buy another luxury property in her own name – an apartment in Kings Gate Walk, Westminster. It has been seized, after she failed to make any repayments on her mortgage debt of more than £1.6 million, the judge heard.
Lawrence Mcdonald, the mortgage lender’s barrister, said it was unclear if the sanctions were behind the failure to repay the loan, “but it is certainly a turbulent time in their lives”.