Ngerian Businessman and Oil Tycoon Michael Prest, 51, is supposed to be paying ex-wife Yasmin £270,000 a year - but instead is giving her just £150 a week in cash, less than the minimum wage.
And although he was previously ordered by the High Court to give her a lump sum of £17.5m and several London houses, he managed to quash that order at the Appeal Court in October by claiming the millions of pounds in cash and properties held by companies he controls should not be counted as his assets.
Michael Prest, left, is said to be hiding his millions' from ex-wife Yasmin Prest after being ordered to give her a lump sum of £17.5million
Now, in a divorce case that has built up legal costs estimated to exceed £3m, Mrs Prest, 50, who has four children by her ex-husband, has appealed to London’s Supreme Court to get her hands on the fortune.
Now the Supreme Court in the United Kingdom will on 12 June, give its verdict
on a high profile divorce case involving a Nigerian-British couple, Michael
and Yasmin Prest.
To be decided upon is whether Yasmin is entitled to take over 14 properties
owned by Michael Prests oil company, Petrodel Resources and two other
companies in the UK, as part of the settlement for the 17.5 million pounds
settlement awarded Yasmin by a lower family court five years ago.
The Independent newspaper says the case, with potential to resolve some
legal problems in UK divorce law has pitched the family and the commercial
divisions of the High Court against each other.Michael Prest: bitter
divorce caseYasmin Prest
Wednesdays hotly anticipated Supreme Court judgment is likely to have
seismic repercussions, experts warn, with calls for Parliament to change
the law, the paper reported Sunday.
Michael Prest, 51, an oil business tycoon and his ex-wife, Yasmin met 20
years ago in London, and both enjoyed the fruits of the fortune he amassed,
sending their son and three daughters to public school, and alternating
their time between a multimillion-pound house in London and homes in the
Caribbean and Nigeria. Michael was born in Nigeria to an Itsekiri chief
before moving to the UK as a child.
The Independent further reports:
In 2008, they separated, leading to a protracted legal row that has shaken
the foundations of matrimonial law, putting it in direct conflict with
commercial interests.
Central to the case is the fact that Mr Prest, who lives in Monaco, has
refused to pay a £17.5m settlement to his 50-year-old ex-wife – a
British-born IT consultant who, like her former husband, has dual Nigerian
nationality – and that the High Court ordered the transfer of assets from
his companies as part-payment.
Family lawyers insist that to find in his favour would be to create a
cheats charter whereby the wealthy can simply place assets in companies,
thus putting them outside what is classed as personal wealth. Commercial
experts, however, claim that piercing the corporate veil would create an
impossible situation in which spouses were allowed to tread where other
creditors are not.
The dilemma stems from a High Court judgment in 2011. Describing Mr Prest
as a manipulative and wholly unreliable witness, who had treated legal
proceedings as a game, Mr Justice Moylan rejected his assertion that he was
heavily in debt and conservatively estimated his wealth at $60m or more.
Awarding Mrs Prest just under half of the fortune, the judge said that part
of this payment should be made by the transfer of 14 properties in London
and Nevis, owned by Mr Prests Isle of Man-registered Petrodel group of
companies.
Petrodel Resources and two other companies, which the High Court assessed
were both wholly controlled by Mr Prest, took the case to the Court of
Appeal and won. While the judges did not reverse the £17.5m award, they
said that Mrs Prest could not claim the properties.
Lord Justice Rimer and Lord Justice Patten, judges with a Chancery Division
background, said that company assets could not be seized as they were
separate legal entities and the court could not simply disregard the law.
Dissenting, however, Lord Justice Thorpe, a judge with a background in the
Family Division, said the companies had been milked to feed the familys
extravagant lifestyle, but: Once the marriage broke down, the husband
resorted to an array of strategies, of varying degrees of ingenuity and
dishonesty, in order to deprive his wife of her accustomed affluence.
Reflecting the cases magnitude, the Supreme Court appointed seven justices
to hear the appeal in March; their judgment is due on Wednesday. Jeremy
Posnansky QC, whose company Farrer Co is acting for Mrs Prest, said that
family courts did not have the power to enforce orders and if his client
won it would make it easier to compel co-operation.
But, if she lost, he added: It will mean there is a divergence between
fairness of the court award and the inability to enforce that award. It
will mean people are done out of what they are entitled to and dishonest
people will be able to stick two fingers up at the court. It will be
anarchy.
But Sarah Ingram, solicitor for the Petrodel companies, said the
alternative would require a change of law: If a special exception needs to
be made for spouses, then it is a matter for Parliament and not the courts
to decide. Otherwise, the courts would effectively be sanctioning spouses
on divorce to asset-strip companies, potentially resulting in insolvency
and giving them priority over third-party creditors of companies.
Zoë Bloom, a family expert at Keystone Law, agreed: If it goes against her,
the only option is to change the statute, to change the Matrimonial Causes
Act. We cant possibly exist with a law that is a cheats charter.
.Reported by the Independent online
No comments:
Post a Comment