Almost no one paid attention to the fact that last Tuesday the first court session in the divorce proceedings between Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov and his wife Irina Viner-Usmanova took place.
The meeting was attended only by representatives of the spouses, who demanded that the entire “divorce process be held behind closed doors” and asked “to dissolve the marriage without clarifying the motives for the divorce.” The court granted the request and set a date for the next hearing. Despite the fact that earlier this meeting was designated as final, the end of the divorce case has not yet been put.
Usmanov himself and Viner-Usmanova were not present at the meeting (according to some sources, Usmanov is in Tashkent where he owns a luxurious property, and Viner-Usmanova is in Moscow – she was seen at the wedding of Vladimir Kiselev Jr. – the son of the owner of the Russian Media Group JSC holding) .
Recall that Usmanov himself initiated the divorce proceedings – he filed an application on May 4, 2022. Formally, with the consent of the parties, it would be possible to dissolve the marriage in any of the civil registry offices, especially since the spouses do not plan to share the jointly acquired property. Usmanov’s statement indicates that the spouses failed to reach mutual agreement on the dissolution of the marriage.
Initially, it was assumed that the divorce between Usmanov and Viner-Usmanova was “fictitious” and dictated by the fact that personal sanctions were imposed on Usmanov in the United States, Great Britain, the countries of the European Union (EU) and even Japan, and his assets were frozen in a number of countries including Switzerland, however, according to experts, a divorce will still not help spouses avoid sanctions if they pursued such a goal.
