Natalia Rotenberg, the ex-wife of Russian oligarch Arkadi Rotenberg, was tried for defamation on Monday in Nice. She is being prosecuted for having denounced on social networks her alleged expulsion from the couple’s villa in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, on the Côte d’Azur, by supposed “Chechen terrorists” in the pay of her ex-husband.
Located on this peninsula popular with Russian billionaires, Villa Shoshana has been unoccupied since 2014 and the first sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea.
“My villa was seized by radical terrorists from Chechnya. They kicked out my employees […]beat the guards and the manager […], changed the locks,” the 41-year-old, who was married to Arkadi Rotenberg until April 2013, wrote in a post published in July 2021 and still online. “The sponsors are great Russian oligarchs,” she added, assuring “that the police [française] was cooperating”.
“The villa is 100% owned by her husband”
Absent before the Nice Criminal Court, like her lawyers, “Natalia Rotenberg does not live in the said villa and has sent people there who have no right or title to stay there”, pleaded the lawyer for SCI Shoshana who manages the villa.
The latter requested a security company which forced security agents mandated by the defendant to leave the premises. “The villa is 100% owned by her husband and the people who took it over are not terrorists,” added Me Sophie Jonquet.
The prosecutor followed these arguments and also demanded that Natalia Rotenberg be condemned for defamation to pay “several thousand euros”. The decision was reserved for May 27.