A wealthy Nigerian-born, British-based oil baron has been granted permission to use Nigerian tribal law to appeal a $21 million divorce payout to his former British wife, the Telegraph has reported.
Michael Prest, the 50 year-old founder of Nigerian energy trading firm Petrodel Resources, split from his wife in an acrimonious divorce in 2008. During a British High Court hearing on the divorce in October last year, the presiding judge ordered the tycoon to pay his former wife cash and assets worth over $20 million.
However, Prest has applied
to appeal the court’s decision on the grounds that his Petrodel’s assets do not belong to him, but
are held in trust for his children,
siblings, nephews and
nieces in Nigeria, under Nigerian Itsekiri customary law.
The oil baron claims that
his company, Petrodel Resources Ltd, was established in 1992 with $13,000 in
start-up capital which was provided by his late father. As a result, under
traditional law, his company and assets are not owned entirely by him, but by
his extended family; he mainly acts as custodian of the wealth.
The tycoon’s attorney
Martin Pointer disclosed to the court that under customary law in Nigeria, Prest
(who is the first-born son of his family) has a historic responsibility to use
the family “inheritance” to look after his siblings and their children.
Prest’s case is also helped
by the fact that his younger brother went to a Nigerian High Court in 2009 and
obtained a declaration which states that Petrodel Resources is a part of their
late father’s estate. Michael Prest also previously acquired a court order from
a Nigerian court which forbids him from sharing information about Petrodel and
its assets with third parties. Hence, it is difficult to ascertain the true
market value of Petrodel resources.
But the former wife, Yasmin
Prest, 49, is crying foul. She told the court that Petrodel is “100 per cent
owned and controlled” by her former husband. Last October, during the original
court case in London, she had claimed that her former husband was worth ‘many
tens, if not hundreds, of millions of pounds’. She demanded a divorce payout of
about $40 million, plus about $1 million a year for upkeep of herself and the
four children she bore with the tycoon. Prest had previously offered her the
equivalent of $35,000 a year and a lump sum of about $2.5 million.
The court has not yet set a
date for the full appeal.
Michael Prest, an extremely
reclusive oil trader and former
protégé of controversial commodities trader Marc
Rich, founded Petrodel resources in 2001. The company has extensive oil
exploration interests in Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia and Uganda.
Source: Forbes
2 comments:
Selfish man!!!
Pl define selfish?
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