SEBASTIAN SHAKESPEARE: Socialite Alexandra Tolstoy claims police raids on her Oxfordshire cottage are 'harassment'

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Socialite Alexandra Tolstoy (pictured), whose boyfriend Sergei Pugachev is accused of embezzling more than £655million, claims police searching her Oxfordshire home is 'complete harassment'

Socialite Alexandra Tolstoy’s private life is turning into a saga worthy of her ancestor Leo’s epic novels.

Yesterday, I disclosed that law enforcement officers had raided her Chelsea home at the weekend in a hunt for her fugitive boyfriend Sergei Pugachev, the oligarch accused by the Russian government of embezzling more than £655 million. 

Now Tolstoy, 41, tells me her Oxfordshire cottage was searched yesterday morning by Thames Valley Police. ‘It’s my cottage and solely owned by me,’ she says. ‘Sergei and I are not married, and he is not on any document connected to the cottage.

‘This is complete harassment. Where will they go next — to my parents?’

Tolstoy says police are wasting their time as it’s well known that Pugachev, 52, is residing in the South of France, where he is a citizen. He travelled there in June, without Tolstoy’s knowledge, claiming he was no longer safe in the UK.

Tolstoy, mother of Pugachev’s three children, tells me it was plain-clothes policemen from the Met who raided her London home, rather than court officials, after a High Court warrant was issued for his arrest last Thursday.

When I asked the Met on Monday if it had carried out the raid, a spokesman said he was unaware of the matter. ‘I’m guessing it’s politically motivated,’ says Tolstoy. ‘The levels of intrusion that have been exercised are well and beyond what’s appropriate to this sort of case.’

Referring to the fact his assets were frozen last year by the High Court, she adds: ‘It’s a freezing order and Sergei has been convicted of no crime.’

Pugachev claims the legal case against him is part of a move to seize his assets after he fell out with the Russian president.

‘There is clearly an agenda to intimidate me and my children to get at Sergei,’ says Tolstoy. ‘In June, the children and I were subjected to a 12-hour raid on the house when the court knew Sergei had left the country.

‘They confiscated and copied my electronic devices and personal documents. I was pregnant and subsequently suffered a miscarriage.’

The saga comes as Britain’s relations with Russia have improved over the Syrian crisis.

British socialite Alexandra Tolstoy’s world has been turned upside down since her billionaire boyfriend Sergei Pugachev (pictured together) was accused by the Russian government of embezzling more than £655million

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