They were part of one of the country’s oldest shipping dynasties, with a fortune estimated as high as £100 million.
So when Nick and Sally Lykiardopulo split up, it was always going to be an expensive divorce.
However, it also turned acrimonious when a judge ruled that Nick, 53, and his side of the Anglo-Greek family had lied to the court – even presenting fake documents to conceal the extent of his wealth.
Mrs Lykiardopulo was awarded a £20 million settlement, and at her request judges lifted an anonymity order which had been imposed to protect the family’s commercial interests.
It has been cited by lawyers as a textbook case of what can happen when things go wrong in the divorce courts.
Now, in the final chapter of the separation, the £6 million estate on the Isle of Wight where the couple lived has been put up for sale.
The historic Grade II listed mansion near Cowes, which comes with its own three-quarter mile long private beach, as well as a lake, paddocks, parkland and woodland set across 202 acres, was once a home of Queen Victoria.
According to Land Registry documents, ownership of the property was transferred to Mrs Lykiardopulo in October 2009, eight months after the original divorce ruling. The 53-year-old daughter of a retired Army colonel is now its sole owner.
The sale of the property marks the end of a family saga that can now be told in full for the first time.
In 1989, Mr Lykiardopulo married Sally Jones in a lavish ceremony attended by members of the exiled Greek royal family in Knightsbridge, central London.
According to relatives, Mrs Lykiardopulo had a typical military upbringing, travelling the world with her father, Martin, mother Rosemary, and two sisters, Fenella and Philippa, before training as a florist.
Mr Lykiardopulo is a top international yachtsman and former winner of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, one of the toughest races in the world.
He has an MA from Oxford University in politics, philosophy and economics, and is a former director of Lykiardopulo and Co, the family shipping concern.
The business was started by Nick’s great-grandfather on Cephalonia, the Greek island which is the setting for the Louis de Bernières novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Nikolaos Lykiardopulo began working as a cabin boy at the age of 13 before starting to buy and sell ships, opening an office in London in 1910.
The couple bought Barton Manor, on the edge of East Cowes, in 2005 for an undisclosed sum – believed to be around £7 million – from Robert Stigwood, the music mogul and former manager of The Bee Gees.
The property was once owned by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who used it as escape from the limelight of London and Windsor. The house was remodelled by the prince on the ruins of an old priory.
According to friends on the island Mrs Lykiardopulo is a keen environmental campaigner whose interests include cycling and opera. She also founded her own company in 2005 selling “fun and fabulous” reading glasses.
The couple have two children, a daughter aged 21 and a son aged 19. But almost 20 years after their wedding, their marriage soured and Mrs Lykiardopulo filed for divorce, seeking a portion of her husband’s multi-million-pound fortune.
The case was heard in the family courts in January 2009. During the 10-day hearing, she accused her husband of trying to divest himself of his interests in the family’s shipping business.
Her lawyers alleged that with the help of family members, he had tried to hide as much as £100 million from the courts, using “forged and backdated documents”.
Mrs Lykiardopulo’s counsel, Tim Bishop, told Mrs Justice Baron: “This is the worst case of non-disclosure ever before the English courts.
“It is a fraud involving £46.5 million to £100 million. It is an unrepentant fraud. It’s a matter where your Ladyship has found that there has been an attempt to involve others in the perversion of justice.”
Awarding Mrs Lykiardopulo a settlement of £20 million, the judge found that her husband, his brother Michael and another family member “had conspired to manufacture, for the purposes of the trial, documents which, on their face, were written in 2005 in order to terminate the husband’s involvement with the family business and to divest himself of his interest therein”.
Mrs Justice Baron said the brothers had “behaved disgracefully so far as the wife’s claim was concerned”, adding: “The husband was civil, polite and likeable but he was untruthful and the only reason for his obfuscation was his need to conceal his true worth.”
The judge said that Michael, the managing director of the family business, “gave me clear and very precise evidence when it suited but was vague when it did not. I am absolutely clear that he knew all about the business, he just chose to disguise and complicate matters because he did not want the truth to emerge.
“I am quite sure that his actions were motivated by what he considers is good for the Lykiardopulo family.”
Nick, referred to in court papers by his full name Panaghis Nicholas Fotis Lykiardopulo, asked the court to impose an anonymity order to conceal the names of the parties in the case.
He argued that the commercial interests of his business would be affected, that the couple’s children would be “mortified” if the names were published, and also said adverse publicity could affect his health.
But Mrs Lykiardopulo urged the court not to impose anonymity ecause “of his [Mr Lykiardopulo’s] shocking attempts to cheat me by his sustained lies to the court”.
Despite her pleas, the judge granted the anonymity order, mainly to protect the family’s business interests. It was subsequently lifted by the Court of Appeal in November 2010 – but the limited publicity which followed does not appear to have affected the family wealth.
According to the Greek Rich List, the Lykiardopulos were the world’s 16th-wealthiest Greek shipping family in 2009/10, before the divorce, with 22 ships. But by 2011/12, after the divorce, they had climbed in the rankings to 13th, with 26 ships.
The three appeal court judges were heavily critical of the couple’s conduct.
Lord Justice Thorpe said: “Between February 2009 and October 2010 a great deal of legal expertise, no doubt at great cost to the parties, has been devoted to the struggle to establish either full public scrutiny or no public scrutiny of the outcome of the hard fought ancillary relief proceedings. The effort and expense hardly seems proportionate.”
He concluded that the wife’s motivation in seeking openness had been to speed up payment of the money, whereas the husband and his brother had been “driven partly by an understandable desire to cloak their misconduct”.
Mr and Mrs Lykiardopulo, and Michael Lykiardopulo, all declined to comment.