Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum  ordered by UK Court to pay £550m to his ex-wife Princess Haya

The sheikh was also told to provide £3m towards the education of their children, Jalila, 14, and Zayed, 9, as well as £9.6m in arrears.

The settlement will also mean he will pay £11.2m a year for the children’s maintenance and for their security when they become adults.

These payments will be guaranteed through a £290m security held by HSBC bank.

The final sum is still less than half of the £1.4b that Haya had originally wanted, despite being described by some London lawyers to be the largest public award ever ordered by an English family court.

However, Moor said he would not give “carte blanche” to Haya’s financial claims, but would instead consider her demands “with a very clear eye to the exceptional circumstances of this case, such as the truly opulent and unprecedented standard of living enjoyed by these parties in Dubai”.

He added: “I remind myself that money was no object during the marriage.”

During almost seven hours of testimony, Haya said a large one-off payment would help remove the sheikh’s hold over her and their children.

She told the court: “I really want to be free and I want them to be free.”

Earlier this year, the President of the Family Division in England and Wales, a senior judge, also determined that Mohammed had ordered the phones of Haya and her lawyers to be hacked using the “Pegasus” state security software.

However, the sheikh’s lawyer, Nigel Dyer, told the court during hearings that “the mother’s financial claims, and the size of the relief that’s being sought, are quite unprecedented”.