Multi-millionaire Dr Martin Coward is sueing his estranged wife Elena Ambrosiadou for spying and harassment.

The super-rich couple who co-founded the Ikos hedge fund split in April 2009 and have since alledgedly launched a total of 58 legal actions against each other. In the latest one, Dr Coward claims that Miss Ambrosiadou hired a major detective agency to plant hidden surveillance devices in his home.

Miss Ambrosiadou, one of the world’s richest women, supposedly hired a security firm to plant surveillance devices at her estranged husband’s home in West Sussex. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the security firm bungled the job by “leaving behind a home movie of their actions”. The equipment they installed had apparently recorded the hapless spies in the process of putting it all in place. The husband was later made aware of this valuable evidence by a counter surveillance team he had employed to perform a bug sweep of the premises.

Court papers filed by Dr Coward stated that the bugs “recorded a long conversation between the claimant and his mother in the study, in which they discussed a number of highly private confidential and sensitive issues”.