Russian oligarch with £100m income to fight between ‘mistress’ and his ex-wife’s children ‘was a great admirer of the Queen’ and loved Britain so much he ‘started watching rugby and going beer drinking,” the court was told

A Russian oligarch whose £100million will is at the center of a bitter battle between his ‘mistress’ and his ex-wife’s children was a ‘great admirer’ of the late queen and loved Britain, a court heard.

Multimillionaire Vladimir Scherbakov was found hanged in Belgium in 2017 at the age of 56, after fleeing the United Kingdom a year earlier to avoid extradition to Russia. is being investigated by the Kremlin for fraud.

He left behind a huge trail of assets spread across the world, including the rights to a £12million mansion in Surrey, where he lived with his second family Brigita Morina, 42, and their children.

The oligarch, who loved Britain so much that he ‘started watching rugby and drinking beer’, made the last will and testament in 2015 while living in England. He had left almost all his possessions, including the English country house, to his then fiancée. Mrs. Morina, before they broke up.

The will has since disappeared, along with its adult children from his marriage to ex-wife Elena Scherbakova claim their father must have ‘torn up’ the will when he fled to Belgium. Olga Scherbakova, 34, and Alexander Scherbakov, 25, claim he wanted to share his vast fortune with them.

Throughout the trial, the siblings have argued that their father never kept his promise to marry Ms. Morina and that he lived hundreds of miles away from her at the time of his death.

Summing up Ms Morina’s case after a lengthy Supreme Court trial, her lawyers claimed the children are trying to prolong the dispute to pursue their father’s fortune abroad.

Her lawyers argued that he only disappeared to Belgium – which he would call a “prison” – because he wanted to avoid extradition to Russia during a criminal investigation.

Hodge Malek KC said he had always planned to return to his family in Surrey.

“Vladimir Scherbakov loved his children (with Mrs. Morina) and really wanted to be with them. The ties with them were strong. He was waiting for the day he could return to them,” he told Mrs Justice Bacon.

‘He was integrated into British life. He was a member of several prestigious clubs. He was a great admirer of our late Queen, and that is very British.’

Mr. Scherbakov had also made great “efforts to integrate into English society by watching rugby, drinking beer, taking golf lessons and following the British royal family,” he continued.

London’s High Court heard Scherbakov had Olga and Alexander with his wife Elena Scherbakova, but the couple split and he entered a relationship in 2010 with Ms Morina, former creative director of luxury Swiss watchmakers DeLaneau.

He spent his time with her in England, partly at the £12 million Granville House, his country home in Weybridge, Surrey, and also owned Ringo Starr’s former home ‘Summer Haze’, a multi-million pound mansion in Pont Street, Belgravia , and a £400,000 wine collection.

He was a member of prestigious London clubs, including the Arts Club in Dover Street and Mayfair’s 5 Hertford Street club, and proposed to Ms Morina at a restaurant in Knightsbridge in 2015.

But Vladimir fled to Belgium in 2016 to avoid extradition after a criminal complaint was filed against him.

The complaint was filed by Andrei Lugovoy, a former Russian security services agent and deputy in the Russian State Duma, who was found by the European Court of Human Rights to have killed Alexander Litvinenko, Mr. Malek said.

Once in Belgium, Scherbakov was plagued by anxiety, the court heard, and refused to eat “fruit given by others, fearing that it might have been poisoned.”

The oligarch was terrified that his conversations were being tapped, so he only used encrypted forms of communication.

The criminal investigation was eventually dropped, but by then Vladimir had died, having been found hanged in Belgium in 2017 at the age of 56.

After his death, his two families found themselves pitted against each other in courts in different parts of the world, including a fight that led to a Belgian judge handing over the right to dispose of their father’s body to his adult children.

In another battle involving his offshore business interests in the British Virgin Islands, a judge said his companies were “worth at least nine figures.”

Mrs Morina and the adult children are now feuding over his last will, which left her and her family with almost all of his non-Russian assets, which are said to be ‘worth more than £100 million’.

With the original English will no longer known, the siblings insist their father must have destroyed it because he no longer wanted Mrs Morina to have “almost everything” he had outside Russia.

But the two-week trial at the London court heard Ms Morina argue that the will could not have been destroyed because it was examined by an expert during an alleged ‘extortion’ attempt against Ms Morina.

Their lawyer said an offer was made to hand over the document in exchange for 35 million euros and the document was forensically analyzed at a meeting in Paris.

While they firmly deny involvement and say the extortion claim was a “hoax”, Mr Malek says the “irresistible inference” from the evidence is that the siblings were involved in the “suppression” of the will.

He said Vladimir never changed his mind about handing over almost all of his non-Russian assets to his British family.

‘A will is what you say will happen when you die. We say you should follow the will,” he said in his closing remarks.

“The adult children want this not to be the end, but just the beginning. They want to challenge the will and keep the dispute going in Belgium.’

He told the judge: ‘It is said that Ms Morina abandoned Vladimir at his most difficult moment when the Russian criminal investigation was underway. That is not only very painful, but also not true.

‘It shows that the adult children are willing to do anything to support their cause.

‘Vladimir wanted to do what he thought was right for both his families. He generously cared for Elena and their children and did the same for Brigita Morina and their two children.

“He was very concerned about the safety of Bridget Morina and their children. Vladimir was afraid that he wanted to protect Mrs. Morina.”

He said Vladimir had “the clear intention to move back to England as soon as the Russian criminal investigation was formally ended, to rejoin Brigita and their children where they had their home… where they could live a quiet life.” had.

‘He wanted to leave Belgium as quickly as possible. He clearly saw it as a prison. He just wanted to get back to the life he had built in England.”

Scherbakova outlined the siblings’ case earlier in the trial, denying suggestions that she had been involved in the “suppression” of her father’s English will or in any alleged attempt at extortion.

She said she did not believe her father would leave a will in favor of his “mistress” in her mother’s home.

And she denied suggestions that her father’s permanent residence when he died was England and therefore his estate was not governed by English law.

“His only motivation for jumping between countries was based on tax avoidance,” she told the judge.

‘We lost our father in tragic and sick circumstances. We stand and fight for the only rights we have left.

‘We are tired of the whole thing. This is a legal nightmare.”

The siblings are fighting Ms Morina’s application for probate from the 2015 will and want a declaration that their father lived in Belgium at the time of death and died without a will.

The two-week trial period is now coming to an end. The judge will reserve her decision for a later date.