Don’t expect any swanky sorority parties at the world’s priciest dorm room – the $88 million Central Park West apartment isn’t actually for student housing, court papers say.
The estranged wife of billionaire Dmitri Rybolovlev says the fertilizer king was full of it when he claimed he bought the 6,700 square foot apartment earlier this year for their daughter Ekaterina to live in while she attends school in New York.
“She does not attend school in New York,” Elena Rybolovleva[cq] said in papers filed today in Manhattan Supreme Court.
And if she did, said Rybolovleva’s lawyer, David Newman, she would stay in slightly more modest digs.
“That apartment is large enough to house her whole undergraduate class if she goes to school here,” Newman said.
The suit contends that Rybolovlev – ranked the 100th richest man in the world by Forbes – actually bought the posh pad in a failed bid to hide his assets from his wife of 24 years.
The jig was up late last year, when the New York press reported that Rybolovlev was buying the apartment from Joan Weill – the wife of former Citigroup head Sanford Weill – for an eye-popping $88 million.
It’s the highest price ever paid for a New York residence.
It’s also not the only record-shattering price Rybolovlev has paid since the mom of his two kids filed for divorce back in 2008. He shelled out $95 million to buy Donald Trump’s old home in Palm Beach – leading his wife to get a court order barring him from doing anything with the property, and a court order freezing his assets in their native Geneva.
That order apparently hasn’t held – Newman said Rybolovlev has been on “a spending spree” that included buying a part of a soccer team in Monaco.
The Day Pitney lawyer said the mogul’s contention that he was just being generous with their daughter doesn’t pass the “smell test” for a few reasons, including that he bought the property through “a sham entity” in order to keep his identity and actions secret. He also said that his client and her husband had looked into buying an apartment in the same building at 15 Central Park West as a pied a terre for themselves back in 2008.
Newman said his client only found out about the purchase through press reports, and that Rybolovlev has yet to come clean to her.
The suit charges he bought the apartment “for his own personal benefit” with “the specific intent of hiding and diverting his personal interest in the property.”
It seeks a court order blocking him from transferring or selling the property pending the resolution of their divorce case.
The pricey ten bedroom apartment with the 2,000 square foot wraparound terrace represents a mere fraction of Rybovlovlev’s wealth, which is estimated at over $9 billion.
Court papers in their divorce battle show the couple’s art collection includes works by Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, Monet and Degas. A lawyer for Rybolovlev did not return a call for comment.