A high court judge has reduced the amount due to a husband as part of a prenuptial agreement by over £4 million, after finding his behaviour to be “deplorable” throughout the marriage and proceedings.
Sitting in the Royal Courts of Justice, Mr Justice Cusworth said Ardal Loh-Gronager (pictured) had sought to “undermine the integrity of the entire court process” by attempting to falsify email evidence, and had further “sought to denigrate and criticise” his former wife throughout the evidence.
Tom Quinn, partner in the family team at Birketts LLP, said the facts of the case were “astonishing”, and had led the judge to conclude Loh-Gronager had “throughout the marriage been preparing the ground for as lucrative a separation as he could contrive”.
“Mr Loh-Gronager’s conduct resulted in both a reduced award under the terms of the prenup and a further reduction directly consequent to his poor conduct (which the judge found inequitable to disregard),” Quinn said.
Banker Loh-Granger married businesswoman and heiress Wei-Lyn Loh – described by the judge as “enormously wealthy” – in 2019. The couple separated in 2023, following the revelation that Loh-Granger had been conducting an affair and financing the extra-marital relationship from the joint account held by the married couple.
Under the terms of a pre-nuptial agreement, Loh-Gronager was due to receive a settlement of £6,449,802, a lump sum which increased for each year the couple remained married.
However, Wei-Lyn Loh claimed Loh-Gronager had already received around £4 million of the amount due by using joint account money for his own personal use and business investments.
Mr Justice Cusworth agreed Loh-Gronager’s payout should be reduced to £2,369,385, due to the amounts he had already received and his general conduct.
“The fact that the husband began to take amounts from the joint account almost as soon as it was set up suggests that he has throughout the marriage been preparing the ground for as lucrative a separation as he could contrive,” the judge said.
“He has taken significant sums during the marriage from joint accounts funded by the wife. These accounts, pursuant to their agreement, were intended to provide primarily for the funding of their joint living expenses, as he knew.
“The husband has then essentially put those funds into investments and accounts in his own name, later to maintain them to be his separate property.
“He has then during the proceedings sought to undermine, harass and unsettle the wife, in the hope that she could be deterred from fighting on against him.”
The court heard Loh-Gronager had hired a private detective to stand outside his wife’s house and pretend to be a door-stepping journalist, and had set up a private Instagram account to publish photos of her.
“I find that he has callously and quite deliberately sought to cause upset to the wife in the hope that she would be persuaded to drop the case and leave him with the outcome he was seeking,” the judge said.
Mr Loh-Gronager fought the case on the basis that the sums transferred from the joint account were a continuation of a pattern of “transfers and gifts” to him which began before their marriage.
He claimed that sums that were removed were to provide him with “financial security” and that his ex was only now trying to undo the gifts “out of unhappiness and bitterness.”
As part of his case, he put forward a series of emails, which he said showed that his ex-wife had been aware of certain transfers and their reasons.
But pointing out that he had not provided the actual emails, but instead pdf copies, the judge found that they had in fact been “created and/or doctored” by Mr Loh-Gronager to boost his case.
“He has sought to undermine the integrity of the entire court process by his attempt to create false evidence in the shape of the three emails, two erroneously altered to appear as if they had been blind copied to the wife, and the third entirely concocted,” said the judge.
Mr Loh-Gronager claimed that a £1 million transfer had been a “gift” in a “desperate attempt” to save their marriage. However, the judge said the alleged gift had to be considered in the context of what had been occurring in the couple’s lives in the months preceding it.
“The wife says that after their conversation, but just before the session with her therapist commenced and, in her absence, the transfer of £1m was made first from her sole account into the parties’ joint current account.
“The husband says that she made this transfer, in his presence, which she denies. What is accepted is that immediately thereafter, he took the funds from the joint account into his own account…
“In all of the circumstances, I am entirely satisfied that I prefer and accept the wife’s account of this day, and I accept her evidence that she has no recollection of making the transfer from her own account.
“I find that the husband could, and did, take that money, first into the joint current account and then into his sole account.”
The judge reduced the amount Loh-Gronager will receive to £2,369,385 due to the sums already received, with a further £375,000 to mark his conduct.
However, as Birkett’s family partner Tom Quinn pointed out, “Mr Loh-Gronager still trousered about £2.3 million and should have no complaints”.
He concluded:
“Important to note that even where a prenup is upheld (and that isn’t always the case), it is still possible for really bad behaviour to impact on the ultimate result; fairness between the parties may demand this.”
Mr Justice Cusworth’s judgment in the case was delivered in October, but has only now been made public.
