Potanin v Potanina

On 25^th January 2019 at an ex parte hearing I granted Natalia Potanina (the wife ‘W’) leave to apply for financial relief pursuant to Part III Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984. In accordance with FPR 18.11 I granted leave to Vladimir Potanin (the husband ‘H’) to apply to set aside. It is his application to set aside that leave that I heard over two days on 3^rd – 4^th October 2019.

I heard the application in private but there has been so much information put in the public arena about this case already, not all of it accurate, that the parties agree that it is better that an accurate report is available. However, the documents filed in support of and against the application are not permitted to be opened or inspected by anyone other than the parties and are not to be disclosed by them.

H and W are each aged 58. They are Russian nationals and do not have any other nationality. They married in 1983 in Russia and have 3 children, aged respectively 35, 30 and 21 years old. They separated in 2007 (as H claims and the Russian courts have found) or 2013 (as W claims). Their divorce took place in 2014. On either basis the marriage was a long one and W is a fully entitled wife. Throughout the marriage the parties lived only in Russia.

The parties were not always wealthy, but from around the mid-1990s H was able to take advantage of the extraordinary opportunities that existed at that time in Russia to amass a fortune. It is unnecessary in this judgment to go into any details beyond saying that H became massively rich. The parties’ lavish lifestyle reflected his wealth which W puts, taking figures from published sources, at some $20 billion (all $ figures are USD).

During the course of the marriage H and W built up substantial cash balances in their names. Before January 2007 H had transferred assets to W valued at RUB1.87 billion which was the equivalent at the prevailing rate of exchange in 2007 to $71 million. He says, and it has not been challenged, that between 2007 – 2008 he transferred a further RUB125 million, being the equivalent of $5.1 million.

This was, says W, only a tiny fraction of H’s true wealth because nearly all his assets comprised shares in companies or other business entities which were not registered in his name but were held in trusts or corporate vehicles. H does not disagree and said that this was an agreed policy to ensure that the family was protected against any financial catastrophe.

It is H’s case that the parties separated in January 2007 when W moved with her possessions out of the family home after an argument. He says that they wanted to protect their youngest child from a divorce and they did not tell him about the separation. They lived apart from then on but continued to take holidays together for the sake of their child and to celebrate certain festivals and family occasions. By 2010 H had formed another relationship and in 2011 became a father again with his new partner.

W’s case on the breakdown of the marriage is set out as follows:

H rejects this and says that the very purpose of the transfer of the large sums of money was for W to achieve a large measure of financial independence, and that from 2007 they lived separate lives thereafter save for holidays and other family events. He says that he raised the issue of a formal divorce in June 2013 and it was the result of W dragging her feet on signing divorce documents that led H in December 2013 to file for divorce.

The issue of divorce proceedings which led to the pronouncement of divorce on 25^th February 2014 started what can only be described as a blizzard of litigation. W appealed the divorce order in April 2014 but the divorce became effective on 28^th May 2014.

W’s case so far as the Russian litigation is concerned can be summarised as follows:

Between 2014 - 2018 there were no less than 5 different cases relating to marital assets instituted by W in the Russian courts. By H’s calculations there were no less than 43 hearings and all 5 cases went to appeal through multiple tiers of court with no less than 5 visits to the Supreme Court and 1 to the Constitutional Court. The result, says H, was the highest award ever made in divorce proceedings in Russia and the highest ever award of child maintenance. That in itself, of course, proves little because the scale of H’s wealth would always have been likely to lead to a very significant award.

W says that the effect of the proceedings was that she ended up with in Roubles the equivalent of $41.5 million. H says that in fact she received the equivalent of $84 million. The explanation of the difference is that H has applied the exchange rate from roubles to dollars as at 2007 by when H had transferred to W RUB 1.87m and W has used the exchange rate for periods from 2015 onwards applying the date of the

It is not necessary for me to engage in any detail in the dispute as to the value of W’s award. It is plain now that the award was worth more in dollars than W asserts because by the time that she applied the exchange rate, a substantial part of her award was no longer in roubles and had been transferred into hard currencies such as Euros and US dollars.

W says that her asset base is now only some £19 million, having given an equivalent amount to various family members, the vast bulk going to her sister who lives in Moscow and assists in the care of their 99 year old mother. H says that this sum “given away” is still largely available for W. Again, this is not an issue for me. How W chose to deal with the money that she has received is a matter for her and cannot influence my decision.

It is against that background that W applied for leave to issue her application. It came before me on 25^th January 2019 when the only material was W’s statement of 219 paragraphs supported by a volume of exhibits and a volume of authorities. W was represented then, as now, by Mr Howard QC and Mr Nagpal, instructed by Hughes Fowler Carruthers.

It is well known to all that there is a very high duty of candour imposed upon an applicant at an ex parte hearing. As Ward LJ said in Obsession Hair and Day Spa Ltd v Hi-Lite Electrical Ltd [2011] EWCA Civ 148:

It is obvious why the duty is placed so high. The applicant is asking for orders at a hearing of which the respondent has no notice and in respect of which he has filed no evidence. The court is dependent on what it is told by the applicant. If the court does not know all the material facts it runs the risk of making unfair orders.

It is thus essential that any presentation at an ex parte hearing is one in which the applicant presents the case on a “warts and all” basis. The applicant is obliged to point out the problems in the way of the case, as well as the points upon which he or she relies. It needs to be remembered also that the judge may well be new to the case, as I was to this case, receiving the papers only the night before the hearing. The applicant’s legal team will have been involved in the case for months (or years – I know not) and will have an infinitely greater knowledge of the material facts than the judge. It is in that context that I have to analyse what I read and was told, as H alleges that I was materially misled in a number of respects as set out later in this judgment.

The relevant Russian family law is to be found in the Family Code of the Russian Federation. Under Chapter 7 entitled the Legal Regime of the Spousal Property, Article 34 reads as follows:

It is clear not only from the judgments of the Russian court but also from the evidence of W’s own experts filed in the proceedings that the trust concept is unknown to Russian law and that Russian law will not ascribe to an individual assets held in the name of a trustee or third party. Shares held outside the ownership of one or both of the spouses are not marital property, a proposition that W disputes. This is subject (for these purposes) only to the proviso that if the party’s residence was outside the Russian Federation overseas law might apply, but that did not apply in this case and Article 161 was therefore bound to frustrate any claim by the applicant to apply foreign law.

It is important to analyse the Russian proceedings to understand their outcome against the presentation given by W before me in January. I do no more than summarise them, given that they are set out at length in the position statements and statements of the parties. Excluding the divorce proceedings, the litigation played out as follows:

This was the claim by the wife for an equal share of the assets held in the parties’ joint names. The first instance judge was Judge Zhrebets who handled much of the parties’ litigation. The issue in case 1 was the division of the joint funds. There was not a dispute as to what they were but when it was that marital relations ceased between the parties because that was the trigger date against which the division of the assets was to be judged. It was H’s case that marital relations ceased between the parties after a dispute in January 2007 and it was W’s case that the spouses preserved their marital relations right up until 17 November 2013. Judge Zhrebets gave judgment on 10^th July 2015. The judge heard a number of witnesses on behalf of the parties, by my reading of the judgment 7 on behalf of H and 5 on behalf of W. The judge analysed their evidence and she concluded that

“The testimony of all the witnesses for W indicates that the parties did in fact begin to live separately in 2007 … the court did not find in any of the testimony that after 2007 H and W had maintained marital relations or that the spouses maintained a common household.”

Accordingly, it followed that the assets within the ownership of the parties were divided by reference to what existed at the actual end of the marital relations and an order made for an equalising payment by H to W. The net result was that W was awarded approximately RUB 2.35 billion after a compensatory payment by H of RUB 385m. W appealed and the appeal worked its way through from the District Court to the Moscow City Court and to the Russian Supreme Court. W failed in her attempt to appeal the date found by the court to be the relevant date for separation, but she did succeed on an appeal against the judge’s calculation of the marital assets which had the effect of increasing her award calculated by Mr Bishop QC, who appeared with Mrs Bailey-Harris for H, by the equivalent of a further $1.6 million.

Put shortly, W’s application in respect of this property which she moved in to in 2007 failed because it was held by a third-party company and was never a marital asset. W had also sought to argue that there were sham transactions. She appealed from the District Court to the Moscow City Court and to the Russian Supreme Court, losing at each stage.

W issued proceedings in May 2014 in Cyprus for inter alia a declaration that H was the beneficial owner of the shares in those companies which were held by a Cyprus company. W argued both in Cyprus and in Russia that the law of Cyprus should be applied. She said that applying the provisions of Cypriot law it would be established that the shares were the asset of H. H argued that the matter was entirely Russian and the Cypriot court had no jurisdiction.

The Cyprus court decision, as quoted by W in her statement, records that H admitted that the companies held shares “on behalf” of H but the decision goes on to say that

In the Russian proceedings W fell foul of Article 161 of the Family Code which is applicable regardless of the location of the assets. W sought to appeal the Cypriot decision but withdrew her appeal. As both parties were Russian citizens with their last place of residence in the Russian Federation, the claim had to be resolved under Russian law in accordance with the provisions of the Family Code of the Russian Federation. The Russian court held that there were no legal grounds to apply foreign law for the resolution of the dispute. This inevitably led W back to Article 34 which establishes that it was not permissible to divide any property not owned by the spouses.

Once again W appealed the whole way up the Russian ladder, including to the Supreme Court. W tried also to take the case to the Russian Constitutional Court seeking to challenge the constitutionality of the provisions of Article 34 of the Family Code. In a judgment of 18^th July 2017, the 16 judge court found that there was no ground to accept the application.

This claim related to the shares which H held in a company called KM. He had disposed of the shares in 2009 and W made a claim in respect of their value in March 2017. The court found that by the time she filed her claim the parties had been separated for more than 10 years and 8 years had passed since the date of the transaction. The court pointed out that there had been widespread media coverage of the division of the business which led to the sale of the shares and that W failed to exercise any steps at the time to protect any rights that she had. In the circumstances the court found that W’s claim was barred by the statute of limitations. Once again W appealed as far as she could without success.

This related to shares in NN and PG but which once again were held in third party names. My reading of the judgments in that case was that the court found in relation to one part of W’s claim that it had already ruled in respect of a dispute between the same parties on the same subject matter and in relation to the other part of W’s claim that it was barred by limitation of time. Accordingly, W’s claim was dismissed. All appeals against the order were unsuccessful.

In addition to the Cyprus proceedings, W had in February 2014 issued proceedings in New York and then a range of different US states (H says 8 applications in 6 states in all) in 2014 to obtain disclosure. In a New York magazine interview in August 2014 W is quoted as saying:

“In America we have commenced discovery proceedings: this is not a court, but a process of searching for assets that identifies assets and their owner. This was initiated to help the Russian court, because the information we unearth can be used in other jurisdictions”.

“But I am hoping these documents will help. After a series of procedures we are hoping that we will also be able to legally use the information obtained in other jurisdictions, including Cyprus, where we have also filed applications for freezing orders on assets. All this was also planned in support of the Russian proceedings. But it has turned out that the Russian court is somewhat disinclined to apply such concepts as “beneficial owner” and “ownership in trust”.

W has not suggested that this quote which H has produced is erroneous and it would imply, contrary to what I was told, that W knew at an early stage that beneficially owned assets would not be taken into account by a Russian court.

W says this in her statement about the Russian proceedings:

It seems clear to me that in every instance the Russian courts have consistently and properly applied Russian law. I do not see how W could have said, as she did at paragraphs 18-19 of her statement in support of her application for leave, that the Russian courts should have applied the same law as would have been applied in England. Like many other jurisdictions, Russia does not recognise beneficial ownership in the way that England does. W must have known this not only from her own experiences of the findings of the Russian courts but from her own evidence and that filed on her behalf within those proceedings.

Mr Howard QC and Mr Nagpal argue that Article 34 does not in terms exclude property which might be owned by a party beneficially but be held in the name of another. He points out also that the experts instructed by W, went no further than to say that Russian law does not recognise trusts. But the fact is W sought to access the third-party assets by the use of foreign law which would have been unnecessary if Russian law took them into account as matrimonial assets. In any event, it is widely known that Russia, along with many other countries, will only divide between the spouses what is held in their individual or joint names.

Mr Howard QC encouraged me to refer to three Russian authorities which he says support his client’s case that beneficial ownership must be taken into account within the description of matrimonial assets. I do not think it proper for me to consider those cases as they do not help. First, it is common ground between the parties that Russia, along with many other countries governed by civil codes, does not have a doctrine of precedent. Each case is decided by applying the terms of the code to the facts agreed or found by the court. Secondly, at least one of these cases, Sergeeva, was decided before W made her appearances in the Supreme Court. It is not clear from the relatively short judgments whether or not authority was cited but it is hard to imagine that relevant authority was repeatedly ignored by a senior court.

I put these points to Mr Howard and his response was that the judgments “were all wrong – they were tainted”.

It is of course W’s case that H’s position, wealth and connections meant that she never had a hope of achieving that to which she was entitled or, indeed, justice from a Russian court. This is a bold submission about which an English court must be cautious. There is a stringent test to establish overseas judicial corruption - see Maximov v NLMK [2017] EWHC 1911 (Comm). The evidence or grounds must be cogent.

It is simply not credible that there has been a widespread conspiracy amongst the members of the Russian judiciary to do W down. Indeed, all the evidence is to the contrary, namely that the Russian court simply applied Russian law.

W accepts that she did not mount a needs-based argument before the Russian court. Of course, her sights were trained much higher.

The law is set out in Agbaje v Agbaje [2010] UKSC 13. The judgment of the Supreme Court was given by Lord Collins in March 2010. The case involved a couple who were married for 38 years and had both British and Nigerian citizenship. The wife had been living in England continuously since 1999 when the marriage broke down. The husband remained in Nigeria. He was a lawyer of some wealth. Under the Nigerian court order the wife received very modest provision. She was given leave at first instance by Munby J (as he then was) who ordered that her application for relief be limited to periodical payments, a property adjustment order in relation to the property in which she lived and a lump sum order.

There are many important dicta in the case and I start with paragraph 33:

Much of the hearing before me has been taken up with H’s case that “some decisive authority has been overlooked and/or the court had been misled” and an equal time was taken by W’s argument to the contrary.

Mr Bishop QC and Mrs Bailey-Harris set out their assertions in this respect in a document containing 16 paragraphs:

One of the difficulties that the court faces on a without notice application is the absence of any evidence from the respondent. As the transcript of the leave hearing shows clearly, I was persuaded by Mr Howard to depart from my strong initial view that the application should be put over to be heard inter partes and that the claim for anything other than a potential needs-based award was speculative. Mr Howard persuaded me on the authority of Traversa v Freddi [2011] 2 FLR 272 that the leave hearing “does not call for a rigorous evaluation of all the circumstances that would be considered once the application has passed through the filter” and that “unless it is obvious that the applicant will fall at one or more of the fences, his performance at each is better left to the evaluation of the trial judge” (paragraphs 30-31, Thorpe LJ).

I should also refer to paragraph 53 and 54 where Munby LJ (as he then was) said:

The wording of the old FPR 8.25 had caused confusion as to whether notice should be given of an application. This was resolved by an amendment to the rules by SI 2017/741 which provides as follows (1) The application must be made without notice to the respondent; (2) Subject to paragraph 3 the court must determine the application without notice; (3) The court may direct that the application be determined on notice to the respondent if the court considers that to be appropriate.

With the benefit of hindsight, I regret that I acceded to Mr Howard’s advocacy and heard the application without notice. If I had had the benefit of the respondent’s presence the unfortunate claims of misrepresentation and breaches of the high duty of candour would have been avoided. Many, perhaps most cases are relatively straightforward. But difficult cases such as this one would undoubtedly have benefitted from dual representation.

In the paragraphs that follow I shall concentrate on what seem to me to be the most important allegations of misrepresentation.

Factual misrepresentation

Misrepresentations as to Russian law/proceedings

It would be wrong for me to say that the court was not directed to the appropriate passages of Agbaje. They are set out along with a paragraph of Zimina v Zimin [2018] 1 FCR 164 in the skeleton argument produced by Mr Howard QC and Mr Nagpal but they did not form a significant part of the hearing and were not the subject of discussion. In particular, I was not referred in oral submissions to paragraphs 7072:

If I had been specifically asked to address those paragraphs I would have had more particularly in mind the following:

I do not think that it is necessary to descend into debate about whose fault it was, whether by commission or omission, to ensure that all material matters were before the court or how this situation came about. The fact is that the court did not have put before it material matters both of fact and of law.

I accept that minor misrepresentations which do not go to the substance of the decision to grant leave will not lead to the leave being rescinded. That much is clear from AA v BB [2015] 2 FLR 1251 where the court held that the wife’s claims were both substantial and meritorious in a case where the Slovenian court had held that it had no jurisdiction to deal with non-Slovenian assets but where W had failed to reveal that she had an appeal pending in the Slovenian court. Moylan J, as he then was, held that this failure was not in itself ground for setting aside leave and that the sense of proportion needed to be kept.

Mr Bishop QC attacks the reasoning of this decision and draws my attention to the fact that no reference is to be seen in the judgment to the fact that the wife in that case appeared to have negligible connection with England. It is not easy to know what to take from this decision other than that an insignificant misrepresentation will not lead to the withdrawal of leave.

This case is to be contrasted with M v W [2015] 1 FLR 465 where a wife who selfevidently had significant financial needs had her leave to make an application under Part III set aside as a result of the failure to put before the court the fact that there had been a full and final agreement made in New Zealand which did not, contrary to the first judge’s understanding, need the approval of the court of that country to be of binding effect.

I am in no doubt that if I had had the full picture before me on 25^th January 2019 I would not have granted W leave to make her application. I am further satisfied therefore that the grant of leave was given as a result of material misleading of the court, however unintentional that might have been.

It therefore follows that I shall set aside the leave granted and determine W’s application afresh.

Before departing from this issue, I should touch on the debate had with counsel as to the test to set aside leave. The phrase “knockout blow” is often used as the test of what a respondent needs to be able to land to revoke leave. It is agreed that “knockout blow” is no different from “compelling reason” and to my mind the latter is a more helpful phrase. I wonder if there is any real difference between “compelling reason” and showing that there is “no solid ground” for the bringing of an application. I find it difficult to see any distinction of significance.

Section 13(1) of the 1984 Act reads:

By s.15 of the Act the court shall have jurisdiction to entertain an application if either of the parties was domiciled in England and Wales at the date of the application or was habitually resident throughout the period of one year ending with the date of the application for leave or was so resident throughout the period of one year ending with

Section 15(1A) reads:

In seeking leave the court takes sections 13 and 16 of the Act in conjunction. S.16 reads:

Section 16(2) requires the court “shall in particular have regard to the following matters:

It can be very shortly stated that H has no connection with England and Wales either during or after the marriage. Likewise, W had no significant, if any, connection during the marriage. Her first contact with England after the marital breakdown appears to have been to obtain advice from London divorce lawyers.

W’s connection since the breakdown of the marriage has not, of course, been the subject of any evidential investigation. It is to be noted that her first property purchase after proceedings was of a large house mortgage-free on Long Island, New York comprising 7 bedrooms and it is a 15,000 sq ft property with 4 acres of land. It was bought in February 2014. W in her statement assesses it to be worth $6.5 million.

It was only much later in the same year that she purchased a “small” flat in London worth approximately £2.5 million with a mortgage of £1.7 million. W has retained pre-existing property in Russia although she says that she does not visit Russia very often because of fears for her health. H is very dubious of the alleged health scare.

What this does show in my judgment is that W’s connection with England and Wales is both recent and modest. The parties’ connection with Russia, the country where the parties were born, grew up, married, lived and divorced was infinitely greater. As Mr Bishop points out, England was only the fourth jurisdiction in which W chose to litigate.

These factors in my view remain relevant notwithstanding s.16(3) which I shall now consider before coming to the other s.16(2) considerations. It reads as follows:

Sub-section 15(1A) and this sub-section were inserted by SI 2011/1484 by The Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments (Maintenance) Regulations 2011 and came into effect on

W argues that the effect of s.16(3) is to disapply s.16(1) and (2) in a case where there is a maintenance element as she is the habitually resident creditor and the court “may not dismiss her application”.

H says that this argument is untenable. It would make s.16(1) and (2) dead in any case with a maintenance element even if the case has no connection at all with England and Wales. A sharing claim would be dismissed in such circumstances, but a needs-based claim would survive, regardless. As virtually all part III applications contain a maintenance element, next to none could be dismissed, however unmeritorious they might appear.

The only authority in which the issue appears to have been discussed is Zimina at first instance where Roberts J opined in two footnotes to Z v Z [2017] 2 FLR 405 and [2017] 2 FLR 456 that:

With great respect to Roberts J I do not read the Maintenance Regulations in that way. The effect of Recital 15 is that all that matters for the applicant is that she, as the prospective maintenance creditor, is habitually resident in England and Wales, regardless of the situation of the parallel jurisdiction.

King LJ refers to this issue in Villiers v Villiers [2018] 2 FLR 1183, a case that arose in a different context (Articles 12 and 13 of the Maintenance Regulations) and in respect of which the Supreme Court has given leave to appeal. I have read with care what she said but it does not seem to me to bite on the issue that I have to consider, namely how sections 16(1) and (2) interplay with 16(3).

I do not agree with the submissions made by H that I should, in effect, ignore s.16(3) because to do otherwise would be to open the floodgates to every Part III maintenance applicant nor those of W that s.16(3) makes nugatory the s.16(2) matters. Both submissions would lead to untenable conclusions at opposite ends of the spectrum to the effect that either s.16(1) and (2) are dead letters or that s16(3) is a dead letter.

In my judgment the effect of s.16(3) is to disentitle a judge from dismissing a claim by an applicant for maintenance (used in the sense of a needs-based claim, whether capital or income) solely on the basis of the absence of connection of such applicant. It would not be inconsistent to dismiss a claim, if appropriate, on grounds relating to matters other than the habitual residence/connection of the applicant with England and Wales. But, in applying the s.16(2) factors I must give weight to W’s habitual residence in this jurisdiction.

I therefore now turn to the other s.16 matters:

Section 16(2)(f) requires the court to consider any right that the applicant has or has had to apply for financial relief from the other party to the marriage in Russia. This wife has been involved in the most extensive litigation imaginable overseas. Mr Bishop characterises this application as not just a second bite at the cherry but something more akin to a sixth bite.

There is no property available in England and Wales in respect of which an order could be made in W’s favour in Part III proceedings other than that she already owns: section 16(2)(g).

I have to consider under section 16(2)(h) the extent to which any order made under this part of this act is likely to be enforceable. I have been given no material which permits me to answer this question.

The final consideration at section 16(2)(i) is the length of time that has elapsed since the divorce. The divorce took place in 2014. I do not think that the five year period between divorce and application can count against W in circumstances where she has been wholly engaged in seeking to obtain an improved award in Russia.

This brings me to a consideration of the award that W received. I accept W’s submission that what she has received is by English standards a paltry award bearing in mind the length of the marriage and the wealth accumulated by H during the marriage. If W and H had been England resident and had divorced in England, she would have received an award of a vastly higher sum. To that extent I accept that she has suffered hardship. Further, the award that W has received would probably not, in an English case based on these facts, be likely to meet her reasonable needs.

Mr Howard accepts the relevance of the issue of W’s connection and that inevitably the weakness of W’s connection with England would limit her award. He says that there is a sliding scale between an assessment of needs at the low end of the scale to a sharing award at the high end as exemplified in the judgment of Holman J in Vilinova v Vilinov [2019] EWHC 1107 (Fam). In that case there was a substantial English connection.

It is at this stage appropriate to refer again to paragraph 71 of Agbaje and paragraph 47 of Zimina v Zimin. In the latter case King LJ set out the Agbaje principles as follows:

Despite the very able submissions made by Mr Howard QC and Mr Nagpal, I have come to the view that this is a classic example of a spouse whose background and married life was firmly fixed in her home country and who had no connection with England, whether by presence of the parties or their assets or business activities, seeking after the breakdown of the marriage to take advantage of what is a more generous approach to her claims than she has been able to achieve in her home country after the fullest possible use of its legal system. Mr Bishop is right to say that if this claim is allowed to proceed then there is effectively no limit to divorce tourism.

Should I, therefore, allow this claim to proceed on a limited basis only, namely that of needs? Even if I were to put aside the weakness of W’s connection with this jurisdiction and instead give full respect to her habitual residence in England and Wales, a survey of all the other s.16 matters counts heavily against W.

I accept of course that if W was successful she would achieve a better standard of living and one to which she could easily argue she is entitled. But it is not the job of the English courts to correct what might be thought to be the deficiencies of the legal systems of another country in the circumstances which are shown when the s.16(2) matters are analysed. It would be arrogant for this court to assume that England and Wales is the sole arbiter of fairness. It is easy to imagine the offence that would be caused if the roles of England and Wales on the one hand and Russia on the other were the roles of the countries reversed.

I do not consider it proper for the court to focus on needs to the exclusion of the other s.16 factors. To most people it would seem inconceivable that someone who has received an award of $40-80m could argue that reasonable needs have not been met, but each case is fact-specific and I accept that W could argue that her reasonable needs have not been met. However, the other s.16 factors militate strongly against her claim proceeding.

Simply because W has suffered what she regards as a very significant injustice in that other country and has come to England after the breakdown of the marriage does not in itself make the case appropriate for determination in England and Wales.

I am satisfied that there is no solid basis for making an award and I therefore accede to H’s application and dismiss the application for leave to bring a claim under Part III of the 1984 Act.