Daughter of Putin ally ordered to hand over £160k for unpaid work at £22m Surrey mansion

A Russian woman has been ordered to pay more than £160,000 in a court row over works at her £22 million Surrey mansion.

Elsina Khayrova was sued by a company that installed fountains and garden lights at her luxury home in Virginia Water.

GSL Installations said Ms Khayrova owed more than £240,000 for work done at the house.

Ms Khayrova, who is the daughter of Rinat Khayrov, a politician in Russian President Vladimir Putin's ruling party, has disputed the claim.

Deputy High Court Judge Adam Vaitilingam has ruled that she owes GSL £117,000 for work done, and that she should pay nearly £50,000 worth of lawyers’ bills run up by GSL.

The judge ruled that there had been an agreement between GSL and Ms Khayrova.

But he said a generator and a phase of a power supply had not yet been installed – and concluded that she should not have to pay those costs.

The judge had overseen a High Court trial in London on Thursday and delivered a ruling on Friday.

Ms Khayrova was not at the trial and was not represented by lawyers.

The judge was told that she said she had health problems.

Barrister Alastair Panton, who represented GSL, had told the judge that £241,272 was owed for work at Ms Khayrova’s “extremely large house”.

He said the company had done business with Ms Khayrova and her husband, Russian businessman Dmitry Tsvetkov for about a decade, at “various properties” in the UK and Cyprus.

Bills had been paid for work at a flat in Knightsbridge, London, and other work at the house in Surrey, he said, but a bill for fountains and garden lights and the improvement of an electricity supply had not been fully paid.

Mr Panton said Ms Khayrova and her husband were in the process of getting divorced and she said in a written defence that Tsvetkov had ordered the work, not her.

He said bills had previously been paid by Ms Khayrova, not her husband, because he is "apparently on the Kremlin’s most-wanted list.”

He added: “Apparently his life is in danger.”

Judge Vaitilingam said in his ruling that GSL was a specialist lighting company owned by Gurdeep Lota.

“He describes it the Rolls Royce of centrally-controlled systems, a centralized automation system for lighting and entertainment that can be controlled from a smart phone,” said the judge.

He said in 2018 Mr Lota had installed a Crestron system inside the Surrey house, bought in January 2018 for £22 million.

Further works, described as “complicated” by Mr Lota, had been requested in 2019 – particularly to extend the lighting into the garden, said the judge.

The judge added: “In short, she says if the works have been carried out then it was at the request of her husband and it is he who should therefore pay for them.”

But the judge concluded there had been an agreement between GSL and Ms Khayrova.