Dubai: An appeal filed by the family trust of a Russian billionaire to release $540 million superyacht ‘Luna’, which is impounded at Dubai’s Port Rashid, will be heard on Wednesday morning by Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts.
The Luna is caught in the middle of England’s most expensive divorce settlement in history between oil and gas tycoon Farkhad Akhmedov and ex-wife Tatiana Akhmedova.
Tatiana won a British court order to seize Akhmedov’s assets as part of her London High Court $641-million divorce settlement award two years ago.
Her lawyers contend she has yet to receive all proceeds from the divorce settlement. Agents acting on behalf of the British courts petitioned the DIFC Courts to take control of the yacht and the Dubai court ruled on February 8 to ‘freeze’ the Luna.
Akhmedov has repeatedly maintained that he does not recognise the UK High Courts’ jurisdiction as the divorce happened in their homeland Russia and there is no legal carriage of the matter to a foreign country.
In the DIFC Courts’ leave of appeal decision in April, Justice Michael Hwang wrote that the appeal hearing be granted “on the grounds that there is a compelling reason why the appeal should be heard, namely that the original orders were granted in circumstances of urgency which merit a second look whether those orders were appropriate in the circumstances of the case”.
