A wealthy Russian businessman has been ordered to pay a £60 million lump sum to his wife by a judge at the High Court.
Mikhail Kroupeev, a naturalised British citizen, has been in a money fight with Elena Kroupeeva since 2024 pending their divorce.
Lawyers for Ms Kroupeeva told the High Court at a hearing last June that the pair married in Russia in 1988 and moved to the UK in 1993 but in 2023 she discovered Mr Kroupeev had secretly started a relationship with a woman in Russia and had a child with her in around 2008.
At a four-day hearing in February, lawyers for Ms Kroupeeva asked a judge to order that she be given the pair’s former matrimonial home in London, worth around £14.4 million, properties in Russia and Portugal worth a combined £26m, and lump sums totalling £32.1m.
Mr Kroupeev, who represented himself via a video link from Cyprus, argued that while properties in London and Moscow could be transferred, he should only have to pay Ms Kroupeeva £300,000, while also asking for a “clean break”.
In a ruling published on Thursday, Deputy High Court Judge James Ewins KC ordered Mr Kroupeev to pay £60 million to his wife and transfer to her the properties in London, Portugal and Russia.
In June, Justin Warshaw KC, for Ms Kroupeeva, told the court in London that Mr Kroupeev’s business empire includes a company with a “contract to export oil in Syria with oil worth 1.5-2 billion dollars”, and a firm that exports oil and gas in Kazakhstan which made tens of millions of dollars in profit.
While Ms Kroupeeva was claiming 50% of her and Mr Kroupeev’s matrimonial assets, Mr Warshaw said that the value of Mr Kroupeev’s businesses had not been determined as he had “refused” to allow them to be valued.
Mr Kroupeev was then found to have committed contempt of court for breaching court orders, with the hearing last year told that he then owed Ms Kroupeeva more than £800,000.
Mr Justice Harrison sentenced him to 28 days in prison, suspended “on terms” that he complied with the orders within four weeks.
In his ruling on Thursday, Judge Ewins said that Mr Kroupeev’s involvement in the case had been “significantly tainted by his ongoing breach of various court orders”, which remained ongoing at the time of the hearing in February.
The judge said that during their 35-year marriage, the pair “enjoyed an exceptionally high standard of living”, including living in a seven-bedroom house with their two children in St John’s Wood, London, and properties in Portugal, Turkey and Russia.
The family went on several holidays via private jet, including an annual Christmas trip to Mustique in a £200,000 villa, with Ms Kroupeeva going on twice-yearly shopping trips to Milan and Mr Kroupeev owning collections of wine, watches and guns.
Judge Ewins also said that Ms Kroupeeva claimed that while she previously had access to around £40,000 a month, this was “terminated” by late 2024 after the breakdown of the marriage.
Mr Kroupeev claimed that he had “limited liquid funds” but the judge said the businessman had spent over £523,000 on his American Express credit card between October 2024 and September 2025 and had paid for education for his “second family”.
The judge continued that Ms Kroupeeva’s evidence was “coherent and consistent” but said Mr Kroupeev’s evidence was “profoundly unsatisfactory and lacking credibility”.
He said: “His repeated apologies proffered during his oral evidence, whilst superficially reasonable, rang hollow when considered in the context of his repeated and ongoing contempt of court.”
The judge said that £100.6m worth of assets being transferred to Ms Kroupeeva was “affordable” for Mr Kroupeev, adding that this “requires him to liquidate a fraction of his available financial resources”.
In a statement distributed by her law firm, Payne Hicks Beach, Mrs Kroupeeva said she was “delighted” with the ruling following “a period of troubling insecurity”.
