The wife at the centre of Britain’s biggest divorce battle had two affairs with younger men while married to her Russian oligarch husband, her son has claimed.
Tatiana Akhmedova’s flings included a relationship with a New-York based art dealer and a 20-year-old web designer whose brother was best friends with her son Temur, he claimed at London’s High Court.
Temur, 27, said his mother’s ‘disgusting and humiliating’ affair with Mark Isles, who was less than half her age, left him deeply troubled and feeling ‘ashamed’ at how she conducted herself during her marriage to his fabulously wealthy father.
He claimed that at times in his life he has drunk excessively, suffers from mental health issues and has also been unable to form healthy relationships as an adult, blaming his mother’s infidelity.
Temur, a London-based city trader, is being sued by his mother Ms Akhmedova, 48 over claims that colluded with his Russian oil trader father to conceal his fortune and ensure that she did not receive her £453 million divorce pay out.
Ms Akhmedova secured Britain’s largest divorce settlement from her ex-husband Farkhad Akhmedov, 64, an oil and gas tycoon, following the end of their 27-year marriage in 2016.
Tatiana Akhmedova (left), the wife at the centre of Britain’s biggest divorce battle, against oil and gas tycoon Farkhad Akhmedov (right), had two affairs with younger men while married to her Russian oligarch husband, her son has claimed
In his statement Temur alleged: ‘The inappropriateness of her relationship with him (Mr Isle) also worried me a lot as a teenager.
‘I found it hard to focus at school, worrying that my schoolfriend’s brother, my friend, would become my ‘new father’.
‘I knew that I would be humiliated and laughed at when it was public knowledge. I was ashamed and afraid to talk to anyone about it at school.’
Temur painted a vivid picture of his mother’s affair with Mr Isle, claiming that he regularly visited the family mansion when his father was away and that they even ‘hugged and kissed’ in front of him on the day his grandmother died.
He added: ‘What I found particularly hurtful is that I felt my mother consistently prioritised her relationship with Mark Isle over our feelings or needs as children.’
Temur also claimed that as the affair with Mr Isle was coming to an end, he discovered that his mother was also having a fling with art dealer Alexander Heller ‘in full public knowledge’.
News of the affair emerged after the family went on holiday to Mustique, where his father rented a villa for £500,000 which used to belong to David Bowie.
Tatiana Akhmedova’s flings included a relationship with New-York based art dealer Alexander Heller and 20-year-old web designer Mark Isles, whose brother was best friends with her son Temur, he told London’s High Court
He alleges that his younger brother Edgar later found a sock belonging to Mr Heller in the laundry at the £20 million family mansion in Surrey with his name tag on it.
He says: ‘However by this point I was so upset and embarrassed about what was happening that I could not even bring myself to confront my mother about it.’
The impact of the affairs, Temur claims has had a profound effect on his ability to trust anybody.
He says: ‘I have also struggled since childhood with severe trust issues. I find it hard to develop trusting relationships with any woman or man either as a partner or friend.’
Giving evidence at the High Court, Temur claimed that the affair and how he felt about it could explain his actions and feelings towards his mother.
But the Honourable Mrs Justice Knowles told him: ‘That’s irrelevant. You know it is. I’m not going to hear your evidence on that.’
Temur (pictured), 27, said his mother’s ‘disgusting and humiliating’ affair with Mark Isles, who was less than half her age, left him deeply troubled and feeling ‘ashamed’ at how she conducted herself during her marriage to his fabulously wealthy father
In a hard-hitting statement, Temur states that after leaving school, he started drinking heavily to ‘blot out my feelings of shame and inadequacy and my anger towards my mother for the way she had treated me.’
In his statement, he also described losing £35 million of his father’s money on the stock market in two months as ‘just bad luck.’
Temur lost the staggering amount at 21 in 2015, after setting up as an independent trader with his father’s help but despite the huge loss, he was convinced that if he invested more it ‘would be followed by great triumphs in the market.’
Temur alleged that from late 2105 to the end of the tax year ending 2016 he went on to lose a total of £48 million followed by a further £8 million loss in the tax year 2016 to 2017, representing a combined loss of £56 million over an 18-month period.
Referring to the £35 million lump sum, the bulk of which he lost in October and November 2015 Temur states: ‘After my initial shock at the investment failure, I did rally.
‘I became convinced this loss was just bad luck, and if I only invested more, I would be able to make it back, with more to spare.
In his statement, Temur also described losing £35 million of his father’s money on the stock market in two months as ‘just bad luck’
‘I had a complete determination to prove myself to my father as an investor and I tried to reassure myself after this overwhelming loss that it was just an early failure, which would be followed by great triumph in the markets.’
He said his father, businessman Farkhad Akhmedov, ‘tried to be kind’ but was ‘very angry’ about the losses.
His mother had told him words to the effect: ‘Everything will be OK, don’t worry.’
The statement also alleged that his huge 2015 losses were incurred by taking ‘highly leveraged positions’ in European stocks.
He added: ‘The market was doing badly at the time and this was not a fruitful strategy.’
The court has already heard details of the unimaginable riches that were showered on Temur, including being given a £27 million flat while he was still a student at the London School of Economics and having use of his father’s £350 million super yacht, aeroplane and helicopter.
Temur admits in his statement that after leaving school, ‘I was not able really to apply myself to anything.’
He then became interested in trading in his early 20s, asking his father for the money because he wanted to prove to him that he too could be a success and ‘impress’ him.
Temur claims that although Ms Akhmedova had been threatening to divorce his father since 1999, she did not act on this until he sold Northgas, his oil and gas company for over £1 billion in 2012.
Tatiana Akhmedova and her son Temur taken in 2014 two years before the record £453 million divorce settlement