Putin’s old judo partner wins court battle with ex-wife over Surrey mansion

Sanctioned oligarch Arkady Rotenberg succeeds in keeping the £27 million property after an eight-year legal fight with his former partner

Vladimir Putin’s former judo partner has won a bitter court battle with his ex-wife to keep his £27 million mansion in Surrey.
The gas pipe tycoon Arkady Rotenberg, 73, has spent eight years fighting Natalia Rotenberg, 43, over the 27,000 sq ft Windlesham mansion, which boasts a 42ft swimming pool, games suite and large underground garage.
In 2016, the High Court ordered the Russian oligarch to hand Mrs Rotenberg the mansion, a £8.65 million lump sum, plus periodical payments of £360,000 a year until December 2024 and a share of a property in France.
But in 2022, three Court of Appeal judges overturned the order after finding it had not been proved that the mansion near Sunningdale golf course was Mr Rotenberg’s to give.
It was heard that the home is owned by Ravendark Holdings Limited, an offshore company.
Mr Rotenberg has now succeeded in keeping the property. Mr Justice Peel, the High Court judge, ruled that Mr Rotenberg’s ex-wife had lost any claim on the house by leaving the UK and settling permanently in Armenia – breaching a key condition of the 2016 order.
The judge also ruled that Mrs Rotenberg had failed to engage with the court battle for the past two years.
Mr Rotenberg was a judo teacher who trained with Putin several times a week before becoming one of Russia’s richest businessmen.
With his brother, Boris Rotenberg, he was the co-owner of SGM, the largest construction company for gas pipelines and electrical power supply lines in Russia. His fortune is estimated at $2.5 billion, according to Forbes.
Mr Rotenberg was sanctioned by the UK after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. He was hit with a new package of financial sanctions in December 2020 after being deemed to have “financially benefited from Russian decision-makers responsible for the annexation of Crimea or the destabilisation of eastern Ukraine”.
Mr and Mrs Rotenberg married in 2005 and had two children, now aged 19 and 17, before divorcing in 2013.
Mrs Rotenberg trained in rhythmic gymnastics and graduated from Gromov School of Music Arts, later becoming a ballet teacher and opening a children’s school of arts and Russian ballet, before launching a clothing label after moving to the UK.
Ruling on the case afresh last week, Mr Justice Peel said that Mr Rotenberg “is well known as a close associate of president Putin”.
The judge said: “She [Mrs Rotenberg] has remarried an Armenian citizen and herself obtained Armenian citizenship. She is permanently resident there and runs a business in the capital.
“Since July 2022 there has been no engagement by her or by lawyers in this country on her behalf. I am confident this was not due to lack of resources, not least because she received £8.65 million from Mr Rotenberg in 2016.
“I am told that she is in dispute with former solicitors in this country. In the course of those proceedings, she has not attended court, has breached numerous orders and has had a 21-day sentence of imprisonment imposed on her for contempt of court, which is yet to be enforced.”
Of the original 2016 divorce order, the judge said: “The £8.65 million had in fact been paid before the order, and Mrs Rotenberg used the sum to buy a London flat. Other than that, Mr Rotenberg has not complied with the capital terms of the order.”
He went on to strike out the ex-wife’s bid to claim the mansion by proving it is Mr Rotenberg’s in all but name.
“Mrs Rotenberg’s application for… a declaration that Mr Rotenberg is the beneficial owner of the property [is] automatically dismissed,” he said.
“She has not engaged either with the court or the other parties since mid-2022, save for a brief email from French lawyers from which nothing ensued.
“I am satisfied that it was a fundamental condition of the order dated July 20 2016 that Mrs Rotenberg and the children would live in England until December 2024.
“Mr Rotenberg’s first attempt to set aside/vary the order in 2019 failed because Mr Justice Moor accepted that she intended to return to England. In fact, she has not done so and nor have the children. They have not been here since 2018.
“She is permanently settled in Armenia, with new citizenship there, a job and a husband.
“It seems to me that Mr Justice Moor was prima facie misled in 2019.”
However, he refused Mr Rotenberg’s application that he rule that Ravendark is the sole legal owner of the property.
“Although I am striking out Mrs Rotenberg’s application… I do so because of her failure to prosecute her claim and comply with court orders, and the unfairness to the respondents of allowing the application to proceed,” he said.
“I am not making an adjudication on the merits as to the beneficial ownership of the property, which would require careful analysis of evidence and law.”
He dismissed a freezing order in relation to the mansion made in 2019, saying: “It was there to protect Mrs Rotenberg’s claims in respect of the property, which are now extinguished.”
The judge also ordered Mrs Rotenberg to pay her former husband and companies’ costs of the case, which will run to more than £280,000.