Dubai ruler must pay ex-wife $730m in divorce settlement

Dubai ruler must pay ex-wife $730m in divorce settlement

London:22.12.2021

A UK court on Tuesday ordered the ruler of Dubai to pay his ex-wife and their children close to £550 million ($730 million), in one of the most expensive divorce settlements in British history. The high court said Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum must pay £251.5 million to his sixth wife, Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein, and make ongoing payments for their children Al Jalila, 14, and Zayed, 9, underpinned by a bank guarantee of £290 million.

The settlement includes £11 million a year to cover security costs for Princess Haya and the children while they are minors. Judge Philip Moor said the family needed “water-tight security”, and that “absolutely uniquely”, the main threat to them came from Sheikh Mohammed, rather than outside sources. Haya, 47, fled to the UK in 2019 and sought custody of her two children. The princess, who is the daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan, said she was “terrified” of her husband, who is alleged to have ordered the forced return to the Gulf emirate of two of his adult daughters: Sheikha Shamsa in August 2000 and her sister Sheikha Latifa, in 2002 and again in 2018. The settlement also includes a holiday budget of £5.1 million, an annual sum of £450,000 for the kids’ staff and around £275,000 for their animals, including two ponies and a horse.

Sheikh Mohammed, 72, is also the vice president and prime minister of the UAE. The final sum, despite being believed by some lawyers to be the largest public award ever ordered by an English family court, is less than half of the £1.4 billion that Haya had sought. The divorce bill eclipses the £450 million deal awarded Tatiana Akhmedova in her 2016 split from Russian billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov, at the time cited as UK’s most expensive divorce.

During almost seven hours of testimony, Haya, 47, said a large one-off payment would allow for a clean break. “I really want to be free and I want them to be free,” she told the court. A spokesman for the sheikh said he “has always ensured that his children are provided for” and asked for the media to respect their privacy. Earlier this year, a separate British family court judge determined that Sheikh Mohammed had ordered the phones of Haya and her lawyers to be hacked using the “Pegasus”spying software. AGENCIES