A London court has allowed the ex-wife of Russian oligarch Vladimir Potanin to pursue a multi-billion dollar claim against his stake in Nornickel, potentially setting the stage for one of the highest-value divorce cases in history.
Natalia Potanina is seeking significant financial relief following their 2014 divorce, specifically demanding 50 per cent of her former husband’s beneficial interest in shares of Nornickel. Mr Potanin, who serves as chief executive of Norilsk Nickel – the world’s largest palladium producer and a major refined nickel producer – faces this mammoth claim after the Court of Appeal ruled on Thursday that the case could proceed.
Potanina is also seeking 50% of any dividends paid to Potanin since 2014 and a high-end Russian property, on which the parties spent around $150 million.
Vladimir Potanin, estimated to be worth around 20 billion US dollars (£16.5 billion), atempted to overturn a Court of Appeal decision allowing Natalia Potanina to bring a multibillion-pound claim against him in London.
Potanina’s lawyers say she received only $41.5 million, less than 1% of the couple’s total assets, after their divorce, though Potanin said his ex-wife received around $84 million and argued the couple had no connection to Britain.
In June 2022, Mr Potanin – then described as Russia’s second richest man and owner of conglomerate Interros – was hit with UK sanctions following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The billionaire was accused of continuing to “amass wealth” as he supported Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime by buying Rosbank and shares in Tinkoff Bankonith since the start of the conflict.
Mr Potanin and Mrs Potanina, both in their early 60s, wed in Russia in 1983, where they lived throughout their married life, and have three adult children.
London’s High Court originally rejected Potanina’s bid to bring a claim in 2019, with a judge saying that if her claim was allowed to proceed “then there is effectively no limit to divorce tourism”.
But on Thursday the Court of Appeal overturned that decision.
“There was evidence before the court … that the wife had very largely severed her ties with Russia. Her connection to her former home country was increasingly tenuous,” the court ruling said.
“The discrepancy between her award of the marital assets and the husband’s retained share was significant; the discrepancy between what she had recovered in Russia compared with what she would have recovered had the case been heard in this jurisdiction was equally significant.”
