Lord Northampton pays fifth wife £17MILLION in divorce settlement after she ran off with Romanian businessman (who's even richer than her ex)

The 7th Marquess of Northampton has struck a divorce deal worth around £17m with fifth wife, Lady Pamela

She will receive a £4m apartment and assets worth £13m

Much of Lord Northampton's £120m wealth will remain intact



Marriage ended after taped recordings confirmed she was having an affair



Lady Pamela's lover named as wealthy multi-millionaire Dr Dan Stoicescu



Lord Spencer Northampton has reached a divorce settlement worth around £17million with his soon-to-be fifth ex-wife Lady Pamela

A truce has been called on an acrimonious divorce battle that was set to become one of the most expensive in English legal history.



The 7th Marquess of Northampton has struck a deal worth around £17million with his soon-to-be ex-wife and spared them both a divorce trial which was expected to cost £2m and start in the High Court tomorrow.

Married for 20 years, the couple is said to have called it quits after Spencer Northampton - one of Britain's wealthiest aristocrats - discovered Lady Pamela had been having an affair with a wealthy Romanian.



Under the terms of the agreement, Lady Northampton, 61, will receive a £4m apartment in Pimlico, central London, as well as cash and possessions worth £13m. She had originally demanded £25m.



The vast majority of the Eton-educated peer's fortune - estimated at £120m - which includes two stately homes, land, valuable paintings, furniture and a disputed Roman treasure hoard, will remain intact.

Confidentiality clauses prevent both parties from speaking about the failure of their 20-year marriage, but details of the acrimonious divorce first began to surface during the summer.

At a pre-trial hearing, Lady Northampton's lover was named as Dr Dan Stoicescu, who made his fortune in the pharmaceutical industry.



The couple were also embroiled in a separate privacy action, which has now ended, over the emergence of secretly-taped phone conversations between Lady Pamela and her 87-year-old father, Jim Haworth.

The recordings were made by Lady Pamela's stepmother, a hairdresser from Staines, Middlesex, and passed on to the 66-year-old peer, prompting him to throw his wife out of their country estate at Compton Wynyates, Middlesex.

Known affectionately as 'Spenny' to his friends, Lord Northampton had already been married four times before he met Pamela Kyprios, who was born into a working class family from Lancashire.



They shared a mutual interest in spiritualism after her second divorce from a wealthy Greek-American shipping financier.

She had been planning to open a holistic healing centre when the pair were introduced by friends. He later claimed that she turned up on his London doorstep demanding to talk to him about her project and never left.



Wealthy: Lord Northampton has an estimated £120 million fortune, owns two stately homes and is regarded as one of Britain's richest aristocrats

They married in December 1990 at Stratford-Upon-Avon register office, with the marquess speaking movingly of his love for her.

'She is the centre of my life. I call her “stregissima” — great white witch,' he said at the time. 'She is a healer, very good at relaxing me.'

And tucked away in the romantic surroundings of Compton Wynyates for the past two decades, the couple seemed blissfully happy.

Affair: Dr Dan Stoicescu was named as Lady Pamela's lover during a pre-trial hearing



Then came the couple's ill-fated 2006 meeting with Dr Dan Stoicescu at a Freemasonry convention in Cyprus.

At first it seemed that Lord Northampton, once dubbed 'the Mystic Marquess' for his preoccupation with spirituality, Freemasonry and alternative religions, had much in common with the fabulously rich Dr Stoicescu, 60, who describes himself as a 'transhumanist' with a deep-seated interest in immortality and anti-ageing therapies.

Described as 'charming' and 'self-effacing', the divorced scientist became only the second person ever to have his human genome mapped.

The procedure, which can reveal genetic diseases which could help you take action to delay their development, cost him £220,000.

He later forked out double that sum to pay for both the marquess and Lady Pamela to undergo the same process at a US clinic.



In the weeks and months that followed their first meeting, divorced father-of-one Stoicescu became a firm family friend and a regular guest at Compton Wynyates.



Stoicescu also lavished gifts upon Lady Pamela — in addition to a Cartier necklace, which came with matching earrings, he bought her a diamond-encrusted watch.

He has homes in Switzerland, Cyprus, Finland, the US and Australia, and was equally generous to her relatives. Her father Jim was presented with a £1,300 bottle of wine from Harrods and a Rolex watch, and taken to dinner at Claridge's.

Stoicescu's huge fortune was first built on a business selling cancer-care products, and he even paid for private treatment for Jim when he had bowel cancer.

But by 2009, Lady Northampton had begun working for Stoicescu, telling her husband that she had been made president of one of his biopharmaceutical companies, Asterion.

This new role meant frequent trips to the US and lengthy absences from Compton Wynyates, where Lord Northampton was left alone and increasingly suspicious about his wife's behaviour.

A friend of the Marquess told The Sunday Telegraph: 'Spenny feels betrayed by Dan Stoicescu, whom he once regarded as one of his closest friends.



'Stoicescu's role in the end of his marriage was a complete and utter shock.'

A friend of Lady Northampton defended her: 'Spenny has had a chequered past and Pamela has had to put up with a great deal. It's fair to say...the marriage was already faltering a considerable time before the relationship began with Dan.'

She added that Lady Pamela resented the claim that she was a gold-digger and deserved a fair settlement for her many years of marriage with Lord Northampton.

As English divorce law largely protects inherited wealth, his two stately homes, Compton Wynyates and Castle Ashby will remain in the family and passed on to his heir.



His other assets include the Sevso Treasure, which comprises 14 large decorated silver vessels and platters. But these cannot be sold due to a long-running dispute over their provenance.

It is thought a painting of Mary I, dating back to 1554 and worth around £6m, may be auctioned to help pay for the divorce settlement.

Divorce deal: As the fifth wife of Lord Northampton, Lady Pamela will receive a settlement worth around £17million

Happier times: Lord Spencer Northampton met Lady Pamela in the late Eighties







