Malaysia’s Sultan Muhammad V ‘did not abandon’ Russian beauty queen wife Oksana Voevodina
- Lawyer for the royal disputes claims in the MailOnline that he did not offer financial help when her pregnancy ran into difficulties
- The pair divorced soon after the birth of their first child, ending a marriage that had shocked Malaysia
Malaysia’s Sultan Muhammad V has denied claims by his ex-wife, Russian beauty queen Oksana Voevodina, that he abandoned her and did not offer help towards the end of her difficult pregnancy when she was in need of cash.
The clarifications, made by the Kelantan Sultan’s Singapore-based lawyer Koh Tien Hua, came after the news website MailOnline ran a report on Monday in which Oksana claimed she had pawned her £203,000 (US$250,000) wedding ring to cover medical bills when she was “at risk of losing the baby”.
“I won’t say the price I sold it for, but it was three times less than its cost,” she told MailOnline, the website of UK-based tabloid Daily Mail.
“I used this money to cover my medical bills in Switzerland as I was at risk of losing the baby.”
These points were all disputed in a letter to the MailOnline on Wednesday, seen by the South China Morning Post.
Koh, of Eversheds Harry Elias, said Muhammad, the hereditary monarch of the state of Kelantan, “did not abandon” his wife, and that she had “left on her own accord to return to Russia”.