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A judge has ruled that green tycoon Dale Vince did not give more than £5mn to the UK Labour party to spite his former wife but at the same time has awarded her over £40mn in a high-profile settlement.
Vince, founder of green energy company Ecotricity, was one of three millionaires who each gave Labour £5mn ahead of its landslide general election victory in July.
The 63-year-old has been embroiled in a divorce case at the Royal Courts of Justice with his former wife Kate, who lived with him from 2000 and married him in 2006.
Vince claimed on Friday that his ex-wife had come away from their divorce with £12mn less than the sum he had offered her four years ago, after taking into account legal fees.
Lawyers for Ms Vince, 50, had complained to the court that her former husband had been giving away matrimonial assets — including over £5mn of donations to Labour — to which she should have been partly entitled, and keeping her “in the dark” about this.
In March the High Court ordered Vince to inform his wife before handing over any more cash to the Labour party or to a group called the Green Britain Foundation. He gave £5.5mn to Labour in multiple donations between April 2022 and May 2024.
But in his judgment, Mr Justice Cusworth said it was “hardly inexplicable” that the tycoon should choose to make a political donation. “I am satisfied that the husband’s motivation in endorsing that transaction was political, and not related to these proceedings,” he said.
Vince said the attempt to curtail his political donations was “legal garbage” which had “zero basis in law”.
“It was a move designed to create headlines. The lawyers turned the whole thing into a major circus and the judge has thrown the whole thing out,” he told the FT.
He said he had offered £50mn to his former wife four years ago, and now she would receive £41.8mn. That would be £38mn net of an estimated £4mn of legal costs, he said.
Dale was previously a donor to the direct action group Just Stop Oil until he decided to back the Labour party instead on the back of its commitment to tackling climate change.
Ms Vince’s lawyer, Sarah Jane Lenihan from Dawson Cornwell, said her client “happily pays tribute to Mr Vince’s many talents, which have been and will be of great value to the community and to the country.”
She said the settlement reflected her client’s major contributions throughout the marriage during which time Vince built the majority of his fortune.
