A member of Qatar’s royal family faces arrest and jail time in the UK after failing to appear in court over a $6 billion debt case.
Sheikh Fahd Ahmed bin Mohammed al-Thani is accused of running up a huge debt over a failed deal to build luxury resorts in Libya and Europe. The original $900m debt has since grown to $6bn (£4.7bn), making it the largest single debt in English legal history.
His creditors even approached Sir Tony Blair to try and negotiate a settlement with Qatar’s ruling family, the al-Thani, but when that failed, they went to the High Court in Manchester to try and get their money back. They say the sheikh refused to appear in an English court, and a judge issued a warrant for his arrest on Thursday.
The case could cause serious embarrassment to the Qatari royal family and threaten a diplomatic conflict with Great Britain. Al-Thani, 64, is a cousin of Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, also known as HBJ, who is a former prime minister and considered one of the most influential figures in the region.
The complex dispute revolves around a $900 million bond obtained in 2009 by al-Thani’s Fast International Trading Group from the Swifthold fund. According to legal documents, the money was to finance “two potentially profitable resort complexes in Libya.” One of those projects, known as Green City, aimed to create a resort with luxury hotels, golf courses and even a cruise ship terminal on Libya’s Mediterranean coast, following plans drawn up when Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was trying to attract Western investment. The overthrow of Gaddafi in 2011 destroyed the Green City scheme.
Refusal to engage
Boies Schiller Flexner, representing Swifthold, argued in court documents that al-Thani’s company “failed to meet any of its obligations” and launched legal action a year later in 2010 to recover the money. The legal documents said: “Mr al-Thani has never been involved in the English proceedings”, adding that he had “refused to take part in these proceedings for over 13 years”.
Al-Thani, who is believed to have settled in London, was living in the UK but has since returned to Qatar.
Swifthold brought in Delta Capital Partners, a US-based advisory firm specializing in asset recovery and litigation finance, to help recover its money. In 2018, an Eyre, Kentucky, judge ruled that $5.92 billion in debt, including interest, remained outstanding. The process was also launched in Qatar with initial success – a local court ordered al-Thani and Fast Trading to comply with the High Court order in 2019, but the Qatari Court of Appeal dismissed the suit in 2021, dealing a heavy blow to Swifthold and Delta.
Delta has now started circulating a photo of al-Thani to ensure he is “arrested as soon as possible” should he try to return to the UK.
A spokesman for Sir Tony said the former prime minister had been approached by a US law firm “to help resolve a case involving a Qatari national which he recalls was brought before a UK court but he decided there was nothing he could do to do.”
It is understood Sir Tony agreed to help and would have received a fee if the case was settled.
Negotiations failed, prompting lawyers for Swifthold, the Anglo-Spanish investment company, to return to the High Court in Manchester to enforce the ruling in a 14-year legal battle.
During a hearing last week, Judge Baird concluded that al-Thani had no intention of going to court in the UK and issued a warrant for his arrest. “Now a warrant can be issued to arrest the debtor [al-Thani] before the judge, so that a decision on further actions can be taken,” he said.
Judge Bird added: “It is clear to me that the defendant will not appear,” he said. “It’s easy as a pike.”
At a hearing last month in Manchester, Judge Bird found al-Thani in contempt of court and warned that if he did not appear at last week’s hearing he risked going to jail.
“He left us blameless”
Christopher DeLise, chief executive of Delta, said: “Delta Capital Partners has an extensive network of investigators, private intelligence firms and operatives that we work with – we circulated a photo of Sheikh Fahad al-Thani across this network to ensure that if he was set foot on British soil he can be spotted and arrested as soon as possible. All this could have been avoided if Sheikh Fahad had done the right thing and cooperated with the court.”
Mr DeLise added: “This is a man who comes from an extremely wealthy family. We have been chasing him for several years. We thought we had a settlement with him and were getting things from his lawyers. But then he left London and has left us without a job ever since.”
At a court hearing on Thursday in Manchester, Michael Smith, a lawyer for Boies Schiller Flexner, told the court how the documents were delivered by email, post and courier to al-Thani’s company, whose lawyers said they no longer represented the royal family. person, and a mailbox connected to Fast International.
In his ruling, the judge said he was “completely satisfied” that lawyers acting on Swifthold’s behalf had repeatedly “provided” legal documents in various ways to al-Thani, his lawyers and his company, Fast International.
He was also pleased that al-Thani was not present, despite the fact that an Arabic interpreter was present at the hearing.