A spurned wife will get to rummage through her ex-hubby’s posh Manhattan apartment, after the former oil CEO claimed he was too broke to pay a $34 million divorce settlement, according to court papers.
Ashley Kozel claims her ex, former Gulf Keystone Petroleum CEO Todd Kozel, has been showering his second wife, a Lithuanian blonde named Inga, with money he should be handing over to satisfy the settlement.
Last July alone, the 48-year-old oilman allegedly spent $9,000 at the Nikki Beach Club, $4,000 at Christian Dior, and $10,000 at a yacht company, according to court papers. Inga, 29, meanwhile, put a $9,000 stay at The Bristol in Paris on her hubby’s Visa.
And last year — shortly after the divorce trial wrapped — Kozel transferred $1.5 million in cash to Inga, court papers claim.
Kozel also owns a $600,000 Ferrari 599 and a $150,000 Mercedes while his new wife cruises around in a Bentley.
“He lives a life of leisure,” Ashley Kozel’s attorney Jeffrey Fisher told a Florida judge at a hearing last month. “And I know he was just in Paris at a fitting for his wife’s new haute-couture outfit.”
Yet when Fisher asked Todd Kozel why he hadn’t paid up, he answered: “I cannot afford to.”
After hearing about Kozel’s free-spending ways, Sarasota County Judge Nancy Donnellan ordered him to let his ex-wife into his $12.7 million apartment at Chelsea’s Walker Tower.
The ex, Ashley Kozel, 47, wants to inventory the pad’s luxury furnishings including a $12,500 photograph of a lion pride in the Serengeti, $45,000 motorized window blinds, and $30,000 couches as part of her bid to collect on the divorce settlement.
Ashley Kozel has accused her former spouse of using money she’s due from the divorce to outfit the love nest he now shares with Inga.
Todd Kozel countered that the stuff is his and calls his ex-wife’s demand to inspect the apartment an attempt to “invade the privacy of, and to annoy and unduly burden, the former husband and Inga.”
“As a matter of common decency and respect for personal privacy, the former wife should not be allowed to rummage through all of Inga’s and Todd’s belongings,” Kozel argued.
Last week a Manhattan judge also gave Ashley Kozel permission to grill Inga on the witness stand after Todd Kozel claimed to have leased her the $12.7 million Manhattan apartment.
The two-day hearing is scheduled for mid-March.
Todd’s lawyer, Marilyn Chinitz, said the $34 million divorce payout that Ashley Kozel would actually be a second multimillion-dollar windfall from the split.
“It’s a bit rich for Ashley Kozel to play the part of the wounded woman when she received an incredibly generous divorce settlement of stock, property and cash in February 2012 that exceeded nine figures and which was paid in full.”
Chinitz added, “It was only after her ex-husband had met and then married another woman that Ashley Kozel chose to allege additional monies owed in a completely separate case. Ashley’s request for [over $34 million] more in a Florida court is being vigorously resisted and we are confident the appellate court will find her cause of action for additional monies from her former husband without cause or basis.”