Uralkali & Co.

Uralkali & CO.

Behind the Money:
$4.8 Billion payout

Who is Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev ? Mr Rybolovlev's wealth came from the sale of his stake in Uralkali, a Russian fertilizer business, for $6.5 billion in 2010. He went on to buy AS Monaco in December 2011, and has since splashed out on players in a bidding war against Qatari-owned Paris Saint Germain. Mr Rybolovlev, who lives in Monaco, also has an estate in the southern French resort of Saint Tropez and his assets include an art collection filled with paintings by Picasso, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Monet.

Among the trophy properties Donald Trump's Palm Beach mansion, Maison de L'Amitie, bought in 2008 for $95 million (£56 million) in 2008, and a New York flat bought in 2012 by trusts linked to Mr Rybolovlev and his 25-year old daughter, Ekaterina, for $88 million (£52 million) - said to be the highest sum ever paid for an apartment in the city at the time.Other properties Mr Rybolovlev owns include a $20 million (£12 million) Hawaii mansion he bought from the Hollywood star, Will Smith, and La Belle Epoque penthouse in Monaco, where he lives, for which he reportedly forked out $300 million (£178 million).He bought the Greek island of Skorpios from the Onassis dynasty last year for a reported £100 million, again for his daughter, a socialite show jumper. The island was made famous as the location of Aristotle Onassis's wedding to the former US First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, in 1968.

A Swiss court has ordered Dmitry Rybolovlev, to hand over half of his fortune to his ex-wife Elena, a sum which the Geneva judge ruled to be precisely 4,020,555,987 Swiss francs and 20 centimes - or £2,681,297,538 and 78 pence ($4.5 Billion US dollars). The couple, who wed in Cyprus, had been married for 23 years. If the sum proves correct, it will dwarf the previous most punitive divorce, estimated at $2.5 billion (£1.5 billion), between Alec Wildenstein, the art heir, and his former wife Jocelyne.

End Result:

Monday's ruling demonstrated that “no one — not even a Russian tycoon who put his fabulous fortune into legal structures such as trusts and offshore companies — is above the law”.