[imagesource: Getty Images]

While the Gates’ divorce is threatening to shake things up among the biggest billionaire divorce settlements in the world, a friend of Vladimir Putin is involved in a divorce that could surpass Britain’s current most expensive divorce settlement.

The friend of Putin is Vladimir Potanin (seen on the left of Putin in the image above) – yes, the similarities between their names and faces are uncanny.

Potanin is described as an “ice hockey buddy” of President Putin and is Russia’s wealthiest and possibly most influential, oligarch.

Via The Telegraph, he has been the world’s 55th richest man and, according to reports, the wealthiest documented billionaire in Russia.

But he wasn’t always this rich.

When he married Natalia Potanina (yes, his name with an ‘a’ on the end) in their early 20s they began married life quite impoverished.

But during Russia’s privatisation in 1995, Mr Potanin acquired his stake in Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest producer of refined nickel, and made his estimated £20 billion fortune.

Seven years ago, Natalia Potanina and Vladimir Potanin divorced, and Russian courts awarded Mrs Potanina £30 million in the divorce settlement.

She wasn’t satisfied with that, and took matters all the way across to Britain.

Now the Court of Appeal in London made a ruling on Thursday that gave his ex-wife the go-ahead to take him on in court once more.

If the claim is successful, Mrs Potanina could walk away with half of her ex-husband’s fortune – £10 billion – making the payout the most lucrative in British legal history.

Other reports suggest she is in line to get somewhere closer to £5 billion. Either way, this makes the £453 million that another Russian billionaire, Farkhad Akhmedov, was ordered to pay his ex-wife look mild in comparison.

The world’s biggest payout is the at least $35 billion that Jeff Bezos reportedly paid to his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott. Mind you, this is before we hear anything regarding the payout from the Gates’ divorce.

Mr Portanin is ahead of Bezos in the yachting game, however, as he reportedly owns three luxury yachts.

Here’s what Lady Justice King said in her judgment made public on Thursday:

“No doubt to most people, whether affluent or poor, the sums received by the wife [in 2014] made her a rich woman.

Everything is, however, relative. The wife’s settlement represented only a tiny proportion of the vast wealth of this family, all of which had been accumulated during this very long marriage.

She said that since Mrs Potanina was still in her 50s at the time, then “arguably the sum she received would nowhere near meet her long-term needs when considered by reference to the lifestyle to which she had long been accustomed”.

Mrs Potanina is adamant that she was the victim of a “grave injustice” and was not given a fair share of the marital wealth because of her ex-husband’s “wealth, power and influence” in Russia.

This is Mrs Potanina:

And this is Vladimir Potanin with his new wife, Yekaterina:

I expect this one to be messy, and Mrs Potanina seems determined to get her share of her ex-husband’s wealth.

[source:telegraph]