the times | Wednesday December 22 2021 2GM 7News
Princess Haya bint al-Hussein de-
scribed her fear at being “blackmailed”
for £6.7 million by her lover and other
members of her security team who
threatened to reveal the affair.
Haya was married to Sheikh
Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum
the ruler of Dubai, when she had a
relationship with a member of her
security staff.
She paid her lover and three other
members of her security team using
money from her daughter’s bank ac-
count in a desperate attempt to keep the
affair secret from her husband, who was
a member of the Queen’s racing circle.
Mr Justice Moor, who awarded the
princess and her children a £554 mil-
lion divorce settlement at the High
Court, condemned the blackmailers,
saying: “It sticks in the throat that these
people have been able to get away with
this and have not been charged.”
Police in Britain had previously in-
vestigated the sheikh for allegedly kid-
napping one of his daughters in Cam-
bridge and hacking the phones of his
former wife and her lawyers, including
Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia.
The princess was first blackmailed in
February 2018 by a former member of
her security team who was bringing an
unfair dismissal claim, according to a
evidence heard in the family division of
the High Court that was made public.
She took £2.5 million from the bank
account of her daughter Jalila, who was
ten, to pay the blackmailer. Five months
later she took a further £4.45 million
from the account to pay two other
blackmailers from her security team,
identified only as Mr B and Mr C. She
told the court: “I was scared and that
was the money available in thatSister bankrolled prince’s
campaign to take over Fifa
David BrownA campaign by Prince Ali al-Hussein of
Jordan to become the head of Fifa was
financed by Princess Haya, his sister.
The prince tried to become president
of international football’s governing or-
ganisation while relations soured
between the United Arab Emirates and
Qatar, which had been awarded the
2022 World Cup.
Details of how his campaign was
funded emerged during court hearings
between Haya and her former husband,
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-
Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and vice-
president of the UAE.
In 2015 Ali, 45, stood against Sepp
Blatter, who had run Fifa for 17 years.
He came second but secured enough
votes to force Blatter into another
round of voting. Ali stood aside but
Blatter, now 85, was later forced out in
a corruption scandal. He was ultimately
succeeded by Gianni Infantino.
Haya told the family division of theHigh Court in London that Moham-
med had been aware of the financing of
the Fifa campaign. After the vote she
agreed to continue the £110,000-a-
month funding for Ali’s campaign in-
vestigating corruption in sport, partic-
ularly football.
Mohammed had also agreed to fi-
nancially support Haya’s relatives in
Jordan, including Ali, who received
£400,000 a year, the court was told.
Haya said that she felt compelled to
honour the commitment after the di-
vorce, so gave Ali £4 million in October
2019 to cover the next decade. She said
the money would enable her brother to
pay the running costs of his home, Bar-
aka Palace in Amman, where he lives
with his wife, Princess Rym al-Ali, a
former BBC and CNN journalist.
Haya acknowledged that she and Ali
received an income from the Jordanian
royal court. They are the children of
King Hussein of Jordan, who died in
1999, and the siblings of King Abdullah
II, who succeeded him.increase as wives seek 50% of assets
However, the 36 per cent that went to
the financier’s former wife amounted to
considerably more, approximately —
£337 million.
Three years later Khoo Kay Peng,
who was chairman of the Laura Ashley
fashion brand, was ordered to pay his
former wife £64 million.
Pauline Chai, a former Miss Malay-
sia, had initially demanded £100 mil-
lion after the breakdown of the couple’s
42-year marriage, which she said repre-
sented about half of the couple’s total
assets. Yet the court stuck with a figure
that was more in the region of 36 per
cent for the wife.
Until Haya’s award, the biggest award
in the UK divorce league table went to
Tatiana Akhmedova, the former wife of
a Russian oil and gas oligarch. In 2016 a
High Court judge ordered Farkhad
Akhmedov, an associate of PresidentPutin of Russia, to pay Akhmedova
£453 million.
A protracted legal tussle ensued, in-
volving efforts by his former wife to
claim Akhmedov’s superyacht from its
dock in Dubai. Akhmedova also
successfully sued her son, Temur, in the
High Court, over claims that he had
conspired with his father to hide the lat-
ter’s assets.
In July the couple reached a private
settlement in which the former wife re-
ceived about £100 million in cash and
£50 million in works of art.
The Haya and Akhmedova settle-
ments could be put in the shade by a
case involving another Russian in the
High Court. Natalia Potanina is seek-
ing half of the assets of her husband,
Valdimir, who is reputed to be Russia’s
second richest man. If successful, she
could be awarded £5.2 billion.Biggest settlements
6 Melinda French Gates is thought
to have received the world’s biggest
divorce settlement, having shared
equally a fortune of £114 billion with
her former husband, Bill Gates, the
founder of Microsoft. They divorced
this year after a 27-year marriage.6 MacKenzie Scott is understood to
have been awarded more than
£27 billion when she split nearly two
years ago from her husband, Jeff
Bezos, the founder of Amazon.6 In 1999 the divorce settlement
between Alec Wildenstein, a US art
dealer, and his wife, Jocelyn, was
estimated at about £3 billion.News
cover jewels, nannies and ponies
The princess, her
lover and ‘£7m for
blackmail plotters’
amount. Those payments are some-
thing that hurt me deeply and I would
like to repay them.”
Haya claims that she was then black-
mailed by her lover, identified as Mr D.
She paid him £1 million from her own
account.
Moor, who referred to Haya as HRH,
or Her Royal Highness, in his judg-
ment, and to the sheikh as HH, or His
Highness, said: “These individuals had
blackmailed HRH over an affair she
had with one of these four people. This
was clearly a most unsatisfactory epi-
sode. I realise I have not heard from the
alleged blackmailers but nobody
should be blackmailed and HRH must
have been very frightened at this point.
“I have already recognised that it
would have been better if HRH had
used her own funds to deal with the
blackmailers but I accept that she was
in a very difficult position indeed. She
would have been desperate for HH not
to find out. I do not consider that this
error of judgment casts any serious
doubt on her general level of responsi-
bility with her finances.
“There will remain a clear and ever-
present risk to HRH for the remainder
of her life, whether it be from HH or just
from the normal terrorist and other
threats faced by a princess in her
position.”
Haya, the youngest of Mohammed’s
six wives, had been educated at Bad-
minton School in Bristol and Bryanston
School in Dorset before taking a degree
in politics, philosophy and economics
at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. Sir An-
drew McFarlane, president of the
family division of the High Court, ruled
last year that she had “embarked upon
an adulterous relationship”. She fled
from Dubai to London in 2019 after her
husband discovered the affair.David BrownMAX MUMBY/INDIGO, YOUSEF ALLAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGESPrincess Haya bint
al-Hussein with the
Queen at the Royal
Windsor Horse Show
in 2009, and, far left,
with Sheikh
Mohammed bin
Rashid al-Maktoum
on their wedding
day in Jordan in- Left, Dalham
Hall in Suffolk,
owned by the sheikh