Putin ally who declared poverty hid £217m of property, UK judge finds

A political ally of Vladimir Putin who declared poverty to a London divorce court was hiding £217m worth of property and land in London and Moscow as well as £21m in investments and a £4m art collection, a judge has found. Vladimir Sloutsker, 69, who died in September from cancer, fought until the end to hide his assets despite previously enjoying “a lifestyle consistent with extreme wealth” with his ex-wife and children, including a nine-bedroom £45m family home in South Kensington in central London. The family court does not usually make its judgments public but Mr Justice Garrido said it was appropriate given Sloutsker’s position as a former senator in the Russian parliament and his “serious and repeated litigation misconduct”. In a judgment made in August but only made public on Monday, the judge ordered Sloutsker’s estate to pay £25m to his ex-wife Alona, which was said to be constitute “just under 60% of the readily liquid assets” and to pay arrears of maintenance and legal fees of more than £1m. Sloutsker died of cancer in a hospice in Geneva. David Allison, the solicitor representing Alona Sloutsker, said: “Unfortunately, Mr Sloutsker’s obstructive behaviour continued after trial until his death in late September. Neither he nor his estate has paid a penny to his former wife and prior to his death he disappeared, cutting off all contact with his young children.” Sloutsker made a vast fortune through his ownership of the Russian investment vehicle Finvest and he was a senator representing the Chuvash Republic in the Russian parliament until 2010. He was also described as an ally of the Russian president and co-founder of the Israeli Jewish Congress, representing the international Israeli diaspora from offices in Tel Aviv. Sloutsker claimed to have fallen into severe financial hardship last year due to his assets being stolen, leaving him even unable to pay his mortgage on the London property. Sloutsker claimed that the “abrupt” change of circumstances “had nothing to do with the applicant [his wife] seeking a divorce at that time”, the court heard. In his judgment, Garrido said the extent of Sloutsker’s true wealth was though “largely evidenced by documents that have been generated on Mr Sloutsker’s behalf, signed and/or authorised by him, demonstrating his financial position very shortly before he was faced with the end of his marriage and start of these proceedings”. Before Sloutsker and his wife separated, they had lived in a “very grand” family home in London of 2,790 sq metres that included nine bedrooms, a heated indoor pool, a massage room, a cinema room, a commercial chef’s kitchen, a wine cellar, a gym and a four-car garage, the judge found. The couple had “spent millions of pounds on redecorating and renovating that large property”, the judge said. Holidays taken included a “family trip to Courchevel at Christmas at a cost of just under half a million euros, a trip to Zermatt, €70,000, a trip that the applicant made to Courchevel, €45,000, a family trip to Dubai, US$100,000, attending a wedding, US$35,000, a summer holiday in Tuscany €400,000”, the judge said. The family home in London was valued at £45m although Sloutsker had failed to pay around £27m or £28m in mortgage payments over the last 12 months. He had £4m in REYL bank in Switzerland and a family home in Moscow valued at £22m. A further plot of land in Moscow was said to have a value of £150m while there was £17m in investments in US private equity. Sloutsker’s art collection, which included a piece by Michelangelo Pistoletto valued at £1m, a George Condo valued at £2m and a Cindy Sherman valued at £250,000, had a total value of about £4m.