LONDON (Reuters) – One of the most high profile divorces in British legal history took a fresh twist on Friday after top hedge fund boss Chris Hohn accused his wife of unspecified criminal and fiduciary wrongdoing in the handling of a charity they founded.
After months of arguing over who gets what from a family fortune a judge has put at $1.3 billion, the couple appeared before Judge James Holman to argue about documents Hohn said supported his allegations.
Hohn’s estranged wife, Jamie Cooper-Hohn, 49, rejects the allegations. She, in turn said Hohn, 47, had been in contempt of court by releasing some of the documents to lawyers representing the trustees of the charity, a position the couple both also shared.
The court heard no details about Hohn’s allegations, with much of the hearing concerned with which documents had already been sent to the trustees’ lawyers and what should happen with both them and other documents still to be handed over.
Calling the disagreement a “storm in a tea-cup”, Judge Holman said the charity, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) was nevertheless “in a state of limbo at the moment because of this litigation”.
After the couple agreed that the release of the documents to the trustees would not be considered in itself an admission of guilt, and also on who else should be able to see them, Judge Holman ended the hearing.
A decision on the division of the marital assets had been reached, the court heard, although a formal judgement has yet to be released by the judge handling that part of proceedings.
CIFF, which aims to help children in the developing world, is one of the world’s top private charities with around $4 billion in the bank in part thanks to profits generated from The Children’s Investment Fund hedge fund (TCI), run by Hohn.
Read more at Reuters
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