They met on their first day of college in Perm, an industrial town in Russia.
She was by his side as he rose from a doctor-turned-entrepreneur into a stockbroker and banker before becoming chairman and majority shareholder of Uralkali, a potash fertilizer producer that was worth $34 billion in 2008.
They stayed together during his 11 months in jail — when he was accused of murdering a competitor before the charges were dropped — and when threats on his life led him to wear a bulletproof vest and move his family to Switzerland.
She was the one he most trusted in the world, Ms. Bersheda said, which is why he was stunned when he found out about the divorce petition on
New Year’s Eve 2008 from his bankers after his accounts were frozen.
But Mr. Rybolovlev’s dalliances with other women became too much to bear, Ms. Rybolovleva said in her divorce petition, which was filed in Geneva. She described parties on yachts where, she said, he had shared some “young conquests with his friends, and other oligarchs,” according to the petition.