Oligarch’s ‘secret’ daughter in court battle with widow over $1bn fortune

Inheritance fight: philanthropist Kakha Bendukidze with Anastasia Goncharova
Champion News
Paul Cheston15 October 2015

The widow of an oligarch who died at a Park Lane hotel is battling his secret “daughter” in the High Court over his $1 billion fortune.

Kakha Bendukidze died aged 58 in last November at the InterContinental a week after having heart surgery in Zurich. He had made his vast fortune in Russian industry during the post-Soviet Union years, before clashing with President Putin and returning to his native Georgia.

After becoming a government minister and philanthropist he married Natalia Zolotova, an art expert and writer, in 1999 and on his death she believed she stood to inherit his riches.

But then the oligarch’s daughter, London-based Anastasia Goncharova, 24 — who the widow claimed she did not know existed — stepped into the spotlight after his death.

The women are now engaged in a legal battle in three countries, disputing each other’s claims to Mr Bendukidze’s estate.

In London, the High Court heard that the key to the case lies in tissue samples from the oligarch’s body, which are being stored on behalf of the Westminster coroner. DNA testing could be decisive as Ms Zolotova insists her rival is not truly Mr Bendukidze’s daughter.

Spotlight: King’s College graduate and PR executive Anastasia Goncharova is engaged in a legal battle in three countries  
Champion News

Miss Goncharova, a King’s College graduate who works in PR, disputes the widow’s claims and insists the couple had been separated for years before he died.

Miss Goncharova is asking Mrs Justice Thirlwall to order that the tissue samples taken during the post-mortem examination be sent to Moscow so that she can prove her parentage.

But lawyers for Ms Zolotova claim she alone has the right to possession and control of any part of her late husband’s body. Watson Pringle, for Miss Goncharova told the judge the tissue samples — removed on the orders of coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox, and kept at the toxicology unit of Imperial College — should be sent for tests in Moscow.

However John Wardell, representing Ms Zolotova, said she has a right to possession of her late husband’s tissue samples “in line with the wishes of the family and her religious beliefs.”

Mrs Justice Thirwall said: “Testing a sample of blood, will decide the fundamental dispute between these parties in Russia as to parentage.

“A simple DNA test will not cost very much. We have proceedings going on all over the place, but the key to all of this is very simple.” The case was adjourned to a date to be decided.

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