UK Court Orders Dubai Ruler To Pay Wife £540M In Divorce Settlement

The ruler of Dubai has been ordered to pay his ex-wife Princess Haya and their two children a divorce settlement which could reach over half a billion pounds – the highest ever awarded by a UK court – to protect them from the threat he poses to them, Haroon Siddique reported for the Guardian.

Photo Insert: A billboard depicting Dubai's ruler against a backdrop of the modern city he and his family have helped create.

In a written judgment, Mr. Justice Moor said that “uniquely” the “main threat” to Haya and the children came from Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who is also prime minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a close Gulf ally of Britain.

Haya fled to Britain in April 2019 with her two children. Since then, in a series of hearings concerned with custody, access, and financial support, which have so far cost over £70 million in legal fees, high court judges have found on the balance of probabilities that: Sheikh Mohammed orchestrated the abductions of two of his other children, Princess Latifa and Princess Shamsa – in the latter case from the streets of Cambridge – and subjected Haya to a campaign of “intimidation.”

Using NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, he hacked the phones of Haya and five of her associates, including two of her lawyers, while the couple were locked in court proceedings.

His agents attempted to buy a £30 million estate next door to Haya’s Berkshire home in a “very significant threat to her security.” Referring to the previous rulings, Moor, who ordered that the sheikh pay over £250 million upfront to Haya and provide a bank guarantee of £290 million for annual payments, said: “I am entirely satisfied that this means that, although HRH (her royal highness Haya) and the children would require security provision in any event, given their status and the general threats of terrorism and kidnap faced in such circumstances, they are particularly vulnerable and need watertight security to ensure their continued safety and security in this country.

“Most importantly in this regard, and absolutely uniquely, the main threat they face is from HH (his highness the sheikh) himself not from outside sources. This is compounded by the full weight of the state that he has available to him as seen by his ability to make use of the Pegasus software, which is only available to governments.”

The high court judge ordered the costs of security for Haya’s lifetime to be paid upfront rather than annually as it would otherwise create a situation whereby it was in her ex-husband’s interests to reduce the payments so that it “weakened the defenses of HRH against him.”

Haya, who in Dubai was given £83m a year for her household spending plus an allowance of £9m per annum and ad hoc gifts, did not ask for any money for herself in the proceedings, other than to compensate for items including jewelry and clothes that she lost as a result of the marital breakdown.

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