The mind-boggling amount of $728,552.00 is due to be paid by the Prime Minister of Dubai to his estranged wife in the largest divorce settlement in recorded history. The agreement, which calls for Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum to pay Princess Haya Bint Al-Hussain a total of £500 million is certainly the largest divorce settlement in British history.
The sheik, who is a billionaire, must now pay a jaw-dropping £251.5 million in a lump sum to his estranged wife, after a ruling from the UK’s High Court on Tuesday. Married for 15 years, they had two children together.
Princess Haya Bint Al-Hussain is the 47-year-old daughter of Jordan’s former King Hussein and the sister of the present King. She fled from Dubai in April of 2019, seeking sanctuary in London with their two children.
She is only one of the sheik’s wives, however — he has five others as well. He is not only the prime minister of the UAE but the owner of a string of racehorses.
The charges in the divorce trial were lurid — that the sheikh used his many millions to intimidate the Princess, making her fear for her life and that he had orchestrated the abduction of two of his daughters who had tried to flee from the UAE.
Now, the extraordinary security measures that she feels she must take to keep herself and her children safe, including a group of bodyguards, private jets, armored vehicles and helicopters, must be paid for by the sheikh.
The astronomical sum will also surely go a long way towards the upkeep of the horses that the Princess owns as well as the pricey properties she lives in — one of them next to Kensington Palace in London. Her other pad is in Egham in Surrey.
There will also be payments of £5.6 million per year to each of the children, a 14-year-old girl and a nine-year old boy. The lurid trial cast a harsh light into the usually shadowy world of the Middle Eastern elites.
Sheikh Mohammed has denied having any part in the abductions of his daughters and their return to the UAE. Incredibly, he even published a poem called “You lived, You Died”, which insiders say obliquely threatened the princess after he allegedly discovered his estranged wife’s affair with a British Army veteran bodyguard.
Princess Haya maintains that she has continued to receive threats even after moving to Great Britain, with some of them saying “we can reach you anywhere.” A ruling from the UK’s High Court stated earlier this year that Sheikh Mohammed had hacked the mobile phones of Princess Haya, her bodyguards and her legal team, which includes the Tory peer Baroness Shackleton.
The High Court judge stated in his ruling that the case was difficult to adjudicate considering “the exceptional wealth and remarkable standard of living enjoyed by these children during the marriage.” That meant that the case was “entirely out of the ordinary” in British jurisprudence.
Princess Haya had provided evidence that she had been blackmailed by members of her own security team over the affair she had had with one of the men. She showed that she had made several payments to four of these individuals and some of those monies came directly out of her own children’s bank accounts.
As a way to make up for this act, she stated to the court that she had sold more than £1 million in jewelry; since that time she has had to sell additional jewelry.
See all the latest news from Greece and the world at Greekreporter.com. Contact our newsroom to report an update or send your story, photos and videos. Follow GR on Google News and subscribe here to our daily email!
