The billionaire’s ex-wife fought for custody of their daughter, who was born via a surrogate mother. According to a Russian court ruling, the couple’s child will continue to live with her father. The Russian court stripped Shamalova of her legal maternity, and the child was illegally registered solely in the father’s name. There is a dash in the line for “mother” on the birth certificate.
Additionally, in violation of all Russian and international legal norms, the court annulled payments to Zhanna Shamalova under the prenuptial agreement. The prenuptial agreement, which was signed by the parties in the office of the former husband with the notary and his lawyer, included obligations for the spouse to pay a certain amount of money to the former wife in the event of the marriage’s dissolution. This agreement was annulled by the Russian court. It is noteworthy that this single clause—regarding the payment of money to the ex-wife—was excluded from the contract by the court’s decision.
The marriage between Kirill and Zhanna Shamalova was based on mutual love, and before the wedding on May 29, 2018, the future billionaire husband insisted on a prenuptial agreement to avoid the division of property and assets in the event of separation. The contract detailed financial terms, including a clause on the significant alimony that Zhanna was entitled to in case of separation. With a thriving business in London and a lifetime of investments, Zhanna supported herself and her relatives both before and after the marriage. She never received any funds from Kirill Shamalov’s accounts, either from Russia or from other countries.
After the wedding, the couple decided to have a child but faced medical difficulties. After months of heavy hormone therapy and several surgeries, they decided to turn to the services of a surrogate mother, for which a specialized clinic was chosen.
In June 2021, during the fourth month of the surrogate mother’s pregnancy, Shamalov told his wife that she could not remain in the open, as there would be obvious questions about her when the baby was born. The billionaire suggested that his wife go with her sister to St. Barth to spend some quiet time and avoid the scrutiny of ill-wishers and the media. Kirill promised to join them soon. However, when he did not come after a couple of weeks because he had started an extramarital affair, this became the reason for the subsequent dissolution of the marriage.
Despite his wife’s efforts, a peaceful parting did not materialize. Kirill began to insist that Zhanna officially abandon the child by signing a statement prepared by his lawyers. She refused. The following night, three men with knives slashed the tires of her car. “I realized that the situation was escalating and that I should probably leave the country because it was no longer safe. Without telling my husband, I took the first flight to Monaco to see my son.” However, the threats continued after that. Shamalova recounted how she received a call from a friend of the billionaire, who was very unequivocal in his statements: “He told me that I had better agree to the terms because if I didn’t, my life would end. He warned that if I came to Moscow, the first bullet would be mine and that I would meet the same fate as Khodorkovsky.”
While fearing for her safety, Zhanna remained in Monaco, while Kirill took steps to completely exclude her from the surrogacy process: he paid the surrogate a significant sum to register the child exclusively in his name. Sources close to Shamalov provided details about the abduction of the surrogate mother and the removal of the child. The surrogate was selected and the birth was organized by Ilya Podolsky, director of the well-known Russian surrogacy firm ECO de Jure. It turned out that the kidnapped pregnant surrogate mother was secretly placed in the clinic of the Administrative Directorate of the President of the Russian Federation on October 5, 2021. By October 6, she had undergone a Caesarean section.
In 2021, the spouses officially divorced. Subsequently, the billionaire owner of the PJSC Sibur Holding sought to deny his ex-wife the payments legally due to her. The main idea was to try to prove that Zhanna had only been interested in money during the marriage, ultimately aiming to have the marriage declared invalid. This was not easy, given that throughout their time together, Zhanna never received any payments into her accounts from her husband, nor did she receive any real estate or car purchases. Credit should be given to Shamalov’s dynamic team of Russian lawyers, who acted in unorthodox ways that often proved effective in Russia’s flexible justice system. The lawyers tracked down Zhanna’s previous husband, with whom she had separated almost fifteen years ago. Volkov has since lived happily and quietly in Russia with his new wife. One can only wonder how convincing the arguments of Shamalov’s team were, as they claimed that Mr. Volkov confessed under oath to experiencing episodic amnesia, which led him to lose his sense of perception and not notice how many years ago he had dissolved his marriage with Zhanna and married someone else. Following this logic, since the ex-husband did not remember the divorce, Zhanna’s marriage to Shamalov could be considered invalid. One might wonder what his current spouse thought about this. However, such creative ideas from Shamalov’s lawyers became known to the press, and eventually, the absurd assumptions were rejected by the Khamovnichesky court of Moscow, which refused to recognize the marriage of Kirill Shamalov and Zhanna as invalid.
Then other methods of persuasion came into play. After an interview with a popular Russian TV channel, in which Zhanna spoke in detail about her personal life with a former member of the Russian President’s family, Russian law enforcement agencies became interested in her. Shamalov initiated a criminal case against Zhanna for slander, and she was placed on the federal wanted list in February 2023. The initiator was the Department of Internal Affairs for the Central Administrative District of Moscow. “I’ve been in a legal battle with the Russian police for three years now, and they never show up for court sessions or provide any evidence against me. I have no idea why this criminal case was even opened. The police don’t give me any documents or bring anything to court,” says Shamalova.
For the past few years, Zhanna Shamalova has been living permanently in Europe, trying to forget her failed marriage as if it were a terrible nightmare. She also dreams of changing her surname to finally transform this traumatic experience into her artistic projects and the further development of her London-based medical business.
Kirill Shamalov is a Russian entrepreneur whose fortune was estimated by Forbes at 800 million dollars as of 2021. He graduated from St. Petersburg State University with a degree in law and began his career at Gazprom. Shamalov is currently the Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of Sibur Holding PJSC. Kirill is the youngest son of Nikolai Shamalov, co-owner of Bank “Rossiya”, who is a longtime friend of Vladimir Putin. The daughter of the Russian president, Katerina Tikhonova, became Shamalov’s first wife (according to Reuters, they married in 2013 and divorced in 2018). After his divorce from Zhanna Shamalova in 2021, Kirill Shamalov married designer Anastasia Zadorina in the summer of 2022. In January 2023 the couple welcomed a son.
