Lawyer: Oligarch agrees to UK’s biggest divorce

LONDON — Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky has agreed to Britain’s biggest divorce settlement to date, his second wife’s lawyer said Friday.

Deborah Levy said 52-year-old Galina Besharova got the settlement after Berezovsky admitted unreasonable behavior.

Levy, of WGS solicitors, declined to confirm the precise amount of money involved in the settlement but said it was larger than the previous record, set when insurance broker John Charman paid his former wife Beverley 48 million pounds ($78 million).

She gave no further details.

The couple met when Berezovsky was a professor of mathematics in Moscow. His fortune was built later, after the 65-year-old founded the first Mercedes dealership in the former Soviet Union. They were married in 1991.

The British newspaper, The Guardian, reported last year that the settlement could be as much as 100 million pounds ($154 million), though Berezovsky laughed off the reported figure when contacted by The Associated Press.

Forbes magazine estimated that the former Kremlin insider is worth $1.1 billion in a 2007 list of the world’s richest people. Once a powerful member of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s circle, the oligarch fled to Britain in 2001 after Vladimir Putin tightened his grip on power.