Radhika Oswal's position in her arranged marriage was clear: her husband Pankaj would give her money and pay for anything she required, just as her wealthy Indian parents had done before him.
She would stay at home, not work or have any involvement in business or financial matters.
"It was perhaps an old fashioned and certainly unusually privileged upbringing, but she was born into money," her barrister Peter Wallis said.
Mrs Oswal was 22 and had never held a job when her husband began negotiating gas supply deals and financing for an ammonia plant in Western Australia in 2001.
She grew accustomed to asking Mr Oswal for funds and getting it, the Victorian Supreme Court heard.
Mrs Oswal believed he had the right to access substantial funds from Burrup Fertilisers, given they had a majority ownership of parent company Burrup Holdings and the plant was operating profitably, Mr Wallis said.
"She didn't know that there was no internal authorisation will be her evidence," Mr Wallis said on Monday.
Mr Oswal allegedly misappropriated more than $150 million in Burrup Fertilisers money for the couple's personal benefit, including luxury cars, yachts and a private jet and the unfinished "Taj Mahal on the Swan River" Perth mansion.
US oil and gas company Apache Corporation, one of many parties in the complex civil trial, alleges the Oswals fled Australia when they realised the game was up after skimming money off the top of the business to apply to cost overruns in building the plant and their own lavish Perth lifestyle.
About $8 million in company money went to Mrs Oswal's Otarian vegetarian restaurant chain in London and New York, the court has heard.
Mr Wallis said Mrs Oswal had no meaningful role in any business before opening the chain in 2007 and was a director of various companies in name only.
Mr Oswal concedes some of the alleged payments were made, he caused them to be made and he had a personal interest in those payments, his barrister Steven Finch SC said.
But whether the now Yara Pilbara Fertilisers got any benefit will be an issue.
Mr Oswal has a counter-claim for more than $100 million and argues the payments were partly in restitution of debts connected with the plant's construction.
Mr Finch said Mr Oswal personally repaid loans obtained by a company called SKF and it was he who effectively completed the plant.
Mr Oswal obtained a $US320 million fixed price construction contract because he personally provided guarantees to cover cost overruns, Mr Finch said.
Tony Bannon SC, also acting for Mr Oswal, said there was no fraudulent scheme to hide the actual $760 million construction cost from ANZ.
The parties will spend the next two days in mediation as the Oswals seek up to $2.5 billion in damages over the sale of their 65 per cent stake in Burrup Holdings.
