When we started this little website, we knew Ager-Hanssen was a serial chaos agent, but we never imagined we would be going to pixel with a tale of such blatant theft, unbecoming of a self-procliamed billionaire.
Despite telling DN media in August 2023 he was worth at least £78 million, he had in fact only recently scammed a single mother for £1.1 million pounds, and despite promising to give it back after he was rumbled, she has been forced to sue him.
Court documents have just been released relating to his work on a divorce case for Zhanna Shamalova, the ex-wife of sanctioned Russian oligarch Kirill Shamalov who was previously married to Katerina Tikhonova, the youngest daughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Ager-Hanssen was engaged by Ms Shamalova to help with her divorce, as she was reportedly entitled to $60,000,000 USD as per her prenuptial agreement. All of this rested on her being able to file for divorce before her husband was able to annul the wedding in another jurisdiction, which would reportedly have voided any payments to her. The race between husband and wife was on – and it all boiled down to who could get their judgement first.
Shamalova signed a contract with Ager-Hanssen’s Custos Group company in late December 2021 for ‘Conflict Management and Litigation Strategy Advice’ in which Ager-Hanssen was to be paid a total of £1.1 million (£600,000 was Ager-Hanssen’s ‘invaluable expertise’ [aka bullshit] and £500,000 which he said would be put on account with lawyers.
Ager-Hanssen was also contracted to receive 20% of anything awarded to Shamalova, meaning he could have been in line for at least a further $12 million if the prenup was settled.
What’s that? An Ager-Hanssen venture that might pay off you say? Oh dear reader, have you learned nothing in the months we have been writing about Ager-Hanssen?!
According to newly released court documents, Shamalova claims Ager-Hanssen instructed Harbottle and Lewis LLP on her behalf to file divorce proceedings against her husband. The law firm reportedly filed this on the 30th December 2021. Meaning Harbottle and Lewis did less than a week’s worth of work on the case, filling out the templated divorce form…
Months passed with Ager-Hanssen stringing her along by telling her these things take time and that there may be an issue with the lawyers formally serving him and that she shouldn’t worry, as if Shamalov did not contest the divorce, it would be finalised by the end of the year.
Ager-Hanssen reiterated to her on the 21st October 2022 that the “delay in the divorce proceedings is purely down to Mr Shamalov’s tactic of refusing to cooperate with the English courts in order to cause maximum hurt to Ms Volkova [the Claimant]” and that he and his legal experts were working flat out on her case.
Shamalova, started to suspect the worst – that she had been targeted by someone secretly working for her husband, as she had previously been subject to a malicious campaign at the behest of Putin.
She reached out to Harbottle and Lewis herself to find out what they had been doing with the £500,000 Ager-Hanssen was spending with them. The firm were perplexed by her questioning, as they told her Ager-Hanssen had instructed them to pause all work after the divorce was filed on the 30th December after their few days work and he had in-fact terminated their retainer entirely in April 2022.
After realising she had been lied to for over a year, with Ager-Hanssen ducking and diving to avoid her, in February 2023 Shamalova finally caught up with him and confronted him at the Connaught Hotel, his favourite kompromat hangout, where he also covertly recorded Kyle Roche. Like a deer in the headlights, he agreed to terminate the agreement and return all of her money.
Of course, Christen being Christen, the money never arrived, and Shamalova was forced into issuing legal proceedings two years after her money was stolen.
We can’t help but spot a pattern here, some of which we’ve previously reported on, in which Ager-Hanssen’s actions seemingly damage his own clients which often directly benefits the other side.
Remember, this is how Martin Wennberg, who Ager-Hanssen advised on his divorce from Swedish heiress Louise Backstrom, ended up being sentenced to prison. It looks like Ager-Hanssen also signed up Harbottle and Lewis for Wennberg, but they are also pursuing a bankruptcy petition against Wennberg for unpaid fees…
Another possibility is that Ager-Hanssen deliberately stonewalled Shamalova’s case in order to buy time for her husband to be able to push ahead with the annulment in Russia and save him $60,000,000 – why else would Comrade Ager-Hanssen turn down a potential $13 million payday (the 20% success fee)- unless he had a better offer elsewhere?
Of course, taking funds from Kirill Shamalov would be highly illegal, as he is a sanctioned individual. It would, however, explain Ager-Hanssen’s Putin apologism and also perhaps why he refused to hand over his devices for forensic imaging in his legal battle with nChain…
You can read the full particulars of claim here:
We’ve published a lot of shocking material on Ager-Hanssen these past five months, but we have never come across such a blatant bottom-feeder theft. This is not the work of a billionaire, more of a low-level grifter that stalks the Mayfair private club scene looking for marks.
If Ager-Hanssen has screwed up your divorce or scammed you out of money, don’t hesitate to contact us, as so many of you already have! He claims to have your £78 million in the bank – so a class action isn’t out of the question…
Ager-Hanssen’s unofficial AI spokesperson “Lucy Walker” has been Stalined out of WhatTheFuck WhatTheFinance and has been unavailable for comment.