LONDON, Jan 24 ― Tan Sri Khoo Kay Peng, Malayan United Industries Bhd’s chairman, was accused by a lawyer for his wife in a bitter UK divorce case of hiding from London court orders and being a “feckless husband.”

Khoo, non-executive chairman of retailer Laura Ashley Holdings Plc, “simply thumbs his nose” at the court and “stays out of the jurisdiction” as he refuses to comply with a court order to pay his wife £50,000 (RM269,977) a month, Richard Todd, a lawyer for Pauline Chai, said yesterday in London.

Chai, 68, and Khoo, 76, are embroiled in a legal battle over an estate acquired in large part during a more than 40-year marriage that’s potentially worth £440 million with Chai seeking about half of that, Todd said. Khoo is trying to have the divorce case moved to Malaysia.

The divorce is the latest high-stakes legal battle to makes its way through British courts, often seen as the divorce capital of the world. In December, Jamie Cooper-Hohn, the ex wife of the Children’s Investment Fund Management UK LLP founder Chris Hohn, was awarded US$530 million in the country’s largest divorce settlement.

“We have this insane pursuit of jurisdiction fight in both hemispheres of the globe,” Todd said. “He is grinding us down by not complying with court orders.”

Support payments

An appeal over jurisdiction is scheduled for June, Judge David Bodey said. Khoo owes his wife £440,000 in missed support payments, Todd said.

“Since the hearing, 10 weeks ago, at which the wife’s maintenance was increased to £50,000 a month, the value of the husband’s holdings in MUI and Laura Ashley has gone up by around 20 million pounds,” Ayesha Vardag, another lawyer for Chai, said in a statement. “In that context, his flagrant decision to breach the judge’s order and pay her not one penny is particularly shameful.”

Bodey said he will make an order later today that requires that £144,000 held in one of Khoo’s bank accounts be transferred to the UK and ultimately to Chai.

Another judge said in a November ruling that the divorce was “staggeringly expensive,” with legal costs close to £3 million.

“The costs in this case have got completely out of control and we want to find out what is really going on,” Tim Scott, a lawyer for Khoo, told the judge, arguing that a £1.85 million payment to the wife has mostly been spent on legal fees.

2,000 shoes

“The wife is asking the husband to pay enormous sums of money,” Scott said. “We say it has been abused on a wholesale basis.”

Chai, a former Miss Malaysia, lives on an 800-acre estate in Hertfordshire, north of London, that she valued at around £30 million, according to an October ruling. She told the court at a previous hearing that she owned 1,000 pairs of shoes which “would take up a very good deal of space,” Bodey said in an October ruling.

“What I am doing is trying to cut through this titanic litigation which is costing the parties a fortune,” Judge Bodey said today, urging the husband and wife to strike a deal. “They have more money than they could possibly require to live on beyond their wildest dreams. It’s sad to see this litigation having to happen.” ― Bloomberg