Tatiana Akhmedova v Farkhad Akhmedov
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mrs Justice Knowles |
| Judgment Date | 18 August 2020 |
| Neutral Citation | [2020] EWHC 2257 (Fam) |
| Court | Family Division |
| Docket Number | Case No: FD13D05340 |
| Date | 18 August 2020 |
[2020] EWHC 2257 (Fam)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
FAMILY DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Mrs Justice Knowles
Case No: FD13D05340
Alan Gourgey QC and James Willan (instructed by PCB Litigation) for the Applicant
Graham Brodie QC and Richard Eschwege (instructed by BCL Solicitors) for the Eighth and Ninth Respondents
Charles Howard QC and Charlotte Hartley (instructed by Hughes Fowler Carruthers) for the Tenth Respondent
Hearing date: 10 August 2020
This judgment was delivered following a remote hearing conducted on a video conferencing platform and attended by the press. The judge has given leave for this version of the judgment to be published.
This is an application by Tatiana Akhmedova [“the Wife”] on notice to the First Respondent [“the Husband”] to vary the freezing orders granted against him by Haddon-Cave J (as he then was) on 20 December 2016 [“the 2016 WFO”] and on 21 March 2018 [“the 2018 WFO”]. I will refer to those orders as the Farkhad WFOs to distinguish them from a freezing order granted in July 2020 with respect to the Tenth Respondent, Temur Akhmedov [“Temur”].
The Farkhad WFOs were granted because of a real risk that Haddon-Cave J's judgment dated 15 December 2016 and his subsequent order of 20 December 2016 would otherwise go unsatisfied. By that judgment and order, Haddon-Cave J had required the Husband to pay the Wife £453,576,152 by way of financial remedy consequent upon the breakdown of their marriage. Despite the Farkhad WFOs, the Husband has not voluntarily paid a penny to the Wife and enforcement efforts to date have raised only approximately £5 million.
The Husband was found by Haddon-Cave J to have engaged in what was described as an “ elaborate and contumacious campaign to evade and frustrate the enforcement of the judgment debt against him”. The Wife's application has been prompted by recent developments in the proceedings suggesting that the Husband and third parties have been exploiting perceived ambiguities in the Farkhad WFOs to continue to fund the Husband's own lavish lifestyle and that of (at least) Temur. The Wife therefore sought a variation of the Farkhad WFOs to make clear that they extended to the totality of the Husband's assets, this extension being necessary to further their purpose.
The background to this litigation is well known by reason of the earlier judgments given by Haddon-Cave J and by me. In summary:
a) The Husband was ordered to pay the Wife £453,576,152 by Haddon-Cave J in December 2016 by way of financial remedies and he has not voluntarily paid a penny of that sum.
b) The Husband's principal identified assets are: (i) a superyacht known as the M/Y Luna [“the Yacht”]; (ii) modern art valued in January 2016 at US$145.2 million [“the Artwork”]; and (iii) cash and securities worth around US$650 million as at December 2016 (but worth substantially more prior to that date, c. US$1 billion) which were previously held by the Third Respondent (Cotor) at UBS [“the Monetary Assets”]. Following an apparent recent dissipation of assets by Temur in May 2020 (in the face of these proceedings), the Husband is now also the ultimate beneficial owner of a valuable office property in central Moscow [“the Moscow Property”]. The Wife contends that the Husband had transferred the Moscow Property to Temur in 2018 to defeat her enforcement efforts.
c) The Yacht and the Artwork were transferred into Liechtenstein trust structures in November 2016 (in the month before the trial conducted by Haddon-Cave J) pursuant to transactions which were, as Haddon-Cave J concluded in setting them aside, intended to prevent the Wife from enforcing her claims.
d) By December 2016, Cotor (as nominee for the Husband) held the Monetary Assets at UBS in Switzerland. On or about 5 December 2016, Cotor transferred those assets to an account held in its name at LGT Bank in Liechtenstein, in turn dissipating them such that by 4 January 2017 nothing remained in that account.
e) Recent developments in these proceedings suggest that, notwithstanding the Farkhad WFOs, the Husband continues to have access to substantial funds and leads a lavish lifestyle, making gifts to third parties (including Temur) whilst refusing to satisfy the Wife's entitlements as ordered by this court.
I have read an affidavit from the Wife's solicitors in support of this application and considered the earlier judgments and orders made with respect to the Farkhad WFOs. I heard oral submissions from Mr Gourgey QC and am indebted to him for his comprehensive and helpful skeleton argument.
The Husband was neither present nor represented and none of the other parties present at this hearing made detailed submissions on the order sought by the Wife. I am satisfied that the Husband had proper notice of this hearing, given that the application was issued on 31 July 2020 and that the methods of service used to bring the application to the Husband's attention meant that he had ample time to be present and represented if he wished.
Background to the Application
The Farkhad WFOs were intended to cover the totality of the Husband's known assets at the time they were made, with the particularisation of assets running to more than two pages of the orders. This was supplemented by a specific paragraph which stated that “ This order applies to assets (whether or not specifically listed) which are in the Respondent's name and whether they are solely or jointly owned”. It was clear that all the Husband's assets should be frozen to mitigate the real risk that the judgments and orders in favour of the Wife would otherwise go unsatisfied.
It now appears that, from the Wife's perusal of files to which she has been granted access concerning a criminal investigation presently taking place in Liechtenstein, the Husband has further assets, which were not known at the time of the Farkhad WFOs and so were not particularised. These include...
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Tatiana Akhmedova v Farkhad Teimur Ogly Akhmedov
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