A specialist financial adviser and businessman could be given a prison sentence after a High Court judge concluded that he had wrongly failed to pay his ex-wife £55,000 alimony.

Mr Justice Holman on Friday concluded that Grant Rogan, founder of the Blenheim Capital Group, was in contempt of court because he had failed to hand the money to Sarah Rogan.

The judge said he would decide on sentence this afternoon.

He said he would not impose an immediate jail term but might impose a suspended jail term.

Ms Rogan, 44, who lives near Oxford, says Mr Rogan has “wilfully” refused to pay alimony he owed and had asked Mr Justice Holman to impose a prison sentence

Sarah Rogan
Sarah Rogan (Nick Ansell/PA)

Mr Rogan, 63, who has remarried and also lives near Oxford, told the judge that he could not afford to pay.

The judge has analysed evidence at a public trial in the Family Division of the High Court in London.

He heard how Mr and Ms Rogan had married in 2002, separated in 2012 and divorced in 2014.

Mr Rogan had agreed to pay Ms Rogan, who was Mr Rogan’s second wife, £5 million in instalments four years ago.

He had also agreed to hand over £8,000 a month alimony pending the full payment of the £5 million.

A judge had approved the agreement and ordered Mr Rogan to pay.

Ms Rogan says she is owed more than £2 million in total.

She said that figure included more than £60,000 in alimony which Mr Rogan could afford to pay.

Sarah Rogan
Mr Rogan claims he has no income (Nick Ansell/PA)

Mr Justice Holman concluded that Mr Rogan had the means to pay £55,000 alimony, a debt dating back to November 2017, but had prioritised other spending.

He said over the past 10 months more than £400,000 had passed through Mr Rogan’s bank account – an average of more that £40,000 a month.

During that time Mr Rogan had spent: £72,000 on two wedding celebrations, one in England and one in Morocco, for him and his third wife; more than £1,700 on pet care and insurance; more than £4,000 on pubs and restaurants; about £2,700 on two holidays in France; and more than £11,000 on a gardener.

The judge heard that Mr Rogan lived at Larkstoke Manor near Wallingford, Oxfordshire.

Grant Rogan
Mr Rogan claimed that friends are lending him money (Nick Ansell/PA)

He had paid more than £4 million for the property – which had six bedrooms, five reception rooms, a tennis court, a swimming pool and 24 acres of land – in 2015.

Mr Rogan, who was born in the United Sates, had told the judge that friends were lending him money.

He indicated that he had “no income” and was trying to “stay alive”.

“I am not trying to shirk my debt obligations,” he said.

“It’s a question of a balancing act and that’s all it is. It’s not wilful.”

Mr Rogan said he was hoping to raise money and told how deals involving governments in Malaysia and Congo were in the pipeline

He said press reporting of the case following an earlier hearing had done “tremendous damage” to his “ability to solve the problem”.

Mr Justice Holman said Mr Rogan’s business involved “inter-governmental offsets” and was “complex”.