THE Aga Khan, the playboy and spiritual leader, is facing Britain’s biggest divorce battle. He is expecting his estranged wife to seek up to half his assets and up to a third of his future earnings — which could amount to $1 billion (£540m).

His wife, Princess Begum Inaara, has engaged the same firm of London lawyers that secured a groundbreaking settlement for the former wife of Ray Parlour, the footballer, earlier this year. That case set a precedent for one spouse to lay claim to the future earnings of another.

The Aga Khan is now trying to avoid having his divorce case heard in Britain and has applied to have it held in France.

A British citizen, he is also a billionaire racehorse owner — he had a share of Shergar, the Derby winner that disappeared after being kidnapped in 1983.

The Aga Khan is also a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad and spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslim community, which has 20m followers worldwide. Each one is supposed to pay 12.5% of their income to accounts linked to the Aga Khan in Switzerland.

It is estimated that in Britain alone there are 15,000 followers, who make a combined contribution of £15m a year. Estimates of his annual income vary from $100m (£54m) to $300m (£162m) a year.

Insiders following the case estimate that, during the six years of his marriage to the princess, his income could have totalled as much as $1.8 billion (£970m), of which she may be able to claim half.

His wife, a German-born former pop singer who also has a degree in international law, became a princess when she married into the German nobility. That marriage ended in divorce in 1997 and a year later she married the Aga Khan, who is 26 years her senior. They separated in 2003 but it was only announced last month.

The princess has hired Maggie Rae, one of the toughest divorce lawyers in Britain and a friend of Cherie Blair. Rae is believed to be assisted by Fiona Shackleton, who acted for Prince Charles in his divorce from Diana, Princess of Wales.

Rae and her colleague Liz Vernon represented Karen Parlour in her landmark case earlier this year. Parlour succeeded in getting her maintenance increased from £212,000 a year to £406,500 by the Court of Appeal. That amounted to more than a third (37%) of the future income of her former husband.

The settlement, which is to be reviewed after four years, also included two mortgage-free houses worth £1m, a £250,000 lump sum and maintenance of £12,500 a year for each of the couple’s three children.

The Aga Khan’s divorce is set to be equally contentious and insiders say there is little chance of it being settled by mutual agreement. His advisers fear Rae will launch a “mega-Parlour” claim that could cost their client up to $1 billion.

They acknowledge that the princess is not a vindictive woman who wants to extract as much cash as possible. She is perceived as having given up any prospect of a lucrative career when she became a Muslim on marrying the Aga Khan.

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