Revealed: Ukrainian refugee who found love with multimillionaire ex-Wonga boss after fleeing her war-torn homeland to stay in his £3million family home is STILL with him a year later… and is now separated from her husband in Kiev

The Ukrainian refugee who found love with the former multi-millionaire lender Wonga after moving into his parental home is still in a relationship with him a year later, MailOnline can reveal.

Mariia Polonchuk, 40, has been in a relationship with investor and dotcom entrepreneur Haakon Overli, 53, since he “left his wife for her last year.”

MailOnline can now reveal that her husband Andrey Sheldunov, who still lives in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, was granted a ‘quick’ divorce from her shortly after her relationship became public.

Ms Polonchuk and Norwegian-born Mr Overli came together after she and her sons were granted visas to live in his £3million home in Surrey, fleeing their war-torn homeland following the Russian invasion.

MailOnline revealed on September 4 last year that the couple had moved out of his family home, leaving behind his wife Imogen, 47, and their school-aged children.

Ms Polonchuk has now become a businesswoman in Britain, calling herself Masha Epshtein and co-founding a design company called ‘Lon: Ltd’ with her son Gregory Sheldunov, 19, who is also known as Hryhorii.

Companies House confirmed the company was established in November last year with an office in London’s Covent Garden, with Ms Polonchuk listed in her married name as the sole director and co-owner with her son.

She describes herself under her LinkedIn profile, using her Masha Ephstein name, as a UK-based, award-winning “designer and entrepreneur” and an “experienced executive with over 15 years of experience in entrepreneurship.”

It adds: ‘Over the years I have gained a wide variety of experience in different business areas such as design, engineering, construction, public catering, publishing, interior design and advertising. Passionate about design and technology.’

She proudly shows off her new company’s launch product: an electrical outlet adapter hub with multiple connections for electronic devices, designed to clear the clutter of cables around desks.

Her LinkedIn profile describes the hub as using “unified connectivity/power/data sharing technology to make our work environment neat and airy, contributing to creativity, efficiency and mental health.”

In a video to promote the product, she introduces herself as “a Ukrainian entrepreneur” and says: “Because of the war I had to leave my country with my two sons and we ended up in Britain.”

On October 16, she posted a congratulatory message praising her son after their product he helped design won a “concept” award at this year’s Red Dot Design Award competition.

In a post of her posing next to her product at the Red Dot museum in Singapore, she wrote: ‘Do you know that feeling when your child just won a competition and you are so proud of him that you can hardly behave? ?? I had something similar with this??’

Mr Overli, who was boss of controversial firm Wonga before it went bankrupt in 2018, has posted a series of messages on his own LinkedIn profile praising the Hub product and its work.

He reposted her post about the Red Dot museum, saying, “The lon: Hub is in an actual museum. Great for the first product; what will the future bring?’

Mr Overli also reposted a photo of her and her son receiving their award, saying: ‘This is very cool! Well done!’

In another post, when the award was announced four months ago, he wrote: ‘Winning a Red Dot award within the first year of its inception is a very special achievement. Congratulations to everyone involved.”

Other posts on his profile praised the product with comments like, “This is very cool. Good technology is always like magic,” “This is truly amazing,” and “The future of agencies is here, today!”

Ms Polonchuk had posed for modeling photos for her photographer husband, Mr Sheldunov, who called her Manya or Masha in social media captions when they were experiencing happier times.

The former couple, who married in Kharkov in 2003, seemed to have a comfortable life before the war, with foreign holidays, and once co-authored a Ukrainian cookbook together.

They were also co-directors of a Kiev-based company called Kontakt Media from 2006 until June last year.

Court records in Ukraine show that Mr Sheldunov filed divorce papers at the Kyiv District Court in Kharkiv on September 19 last year – just two weeks after his wife’s affair came to light.

She wrote a statement nine days earlier, on September 10, in which she said she had “no objection to the dissolution of the marriage.”

Mr Overli had repeatedly tweeted his support for bringing Ukrainian refugees to Britain since the Russian invasion in February last year.

Former health minister and local MP Jeremy Hunt tweeted a photo of Mr Overli, his family and Ms Polonchuk at a local event last year before the couple got together.

Mr Hunt said: ‘It was wonderful to meet a Ukrainian who was welcomed by a local family… nothing more English than the village fete to welcome them.’

Mr Overli, who studied mathematics at the University of Oslo and also has a degree in economics from the University of Durham, made his money in the early years of the dot-com boom after founding the online stockbroker Self Trade in 1997.

The company went public in April 2000 and was sold in October that year for more than £900 million ($1.1 billion).

Wonga fell to government in 2018 after being heavily criticized by politicians including Labor leader Ed Miliband as a leading example of ‘predatory lending’.

Around 200,000 customers were still owed a total of £400 million when Wonga went into administration following a flood of compensation claims.

Campaigners accused the controversial company of being a ‘legal loan shark’ and exploiting customers by offering small loans with astronomical interest rates that many struggled to repay.

Some customers reportedly faced interest rates of up to 5,853 percent before the government stepped in and capped interest rates at 1,500 percent.

Mr Overli later co-founded Dawn Capital, which describes itself as Europe’s largest specialist business-to-business software investor.

A spokesman for Mr. Overli declined to comment on his relationship with Ms. Polonchuk.