A MIDDLE Eastern billionaire who has made a fortune from the reconstruction of Iraq is at the centre of what could become one of Britain’s biggest divorce cases in a hearing due to open at the High Court this week.

Shwan Al-Mulla, a London-based Iraqi Kurd, is expected to be faced with a claim of as much as £500m from his estranged wife Suzan.

Some estimates suggest Al-Mulla, 45, has a fortune of more than £1 billion, according to inquiries made by The Sunday Times. He disputes this figure. Suzan’s lawyers are trying to establish how much he is really worth. The couple have been married 20 years and have five children.

The case will cast light on the sums of money being earned by previously exiled Iraqis who have picked up lucrative contracts to rebuild the country. Al-Mulla’s firm has been involved in rebuilding Baghdad international airport along with dozens of schools and hospitals.

Al-Mulla reportedly made large amounts of money in the 1990s from trade between the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, from where his family come, and the outside world. Although technically such activities breached sanctions, the Kurds in practice were largely autonomous and a certain amount of trade was tolerated by the international community.

Al-Mulla invested in Britain and ran several firms here, including one which, until recently, operated a chain of Domino Pizza takeaways.

Since the fall of Saddam, his business has flourished. He is the president of Iraqi Consultants & Construction Bureau (ICCB) according to the company’s website. The firm reported a turnover of more than £100m between July 2003 and January 2005.

Al-Mulla is also understood to hold a significant stake in Orascom, an Egyptian telecommunications company, which won the contract to operate the mobile phone network in central Iraq.

Last week, however, Al-Mulla said he was not terribly wealthy and that the divorce would be a “very average settlement”. “Unfortunately, I think it’s a typical divorce case,” he said yesterday. “They’ve got all their facts wrong. I wish it were true. I’d be a very happy man.”

He said he was merely an employee of ICCB and that a friend owned the stake in Orascom. However, one family friend, speaking anonymously last week, said Al-Mulla had recently bought a £45m yacht and owned two Ferraris.

According to public records, the couple lived in a £2m flat in central London and his family own a Buckinghamshire mansion. They also have homes in the south of France, Jordan and Florida.

The Al-Mullas met as students in London and married in 1980. They separated in 2004.

Suzan, 45, is also from a well-connected Iraqi family. Last week, she and her solicitor, Shahrokh Mireskandari of Dean & Dean, both declined to comment.

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