Riyadh, June 18: Saudi Arabia’s Algosaibi group has been sued for 720 million dollars by lawyers representing a collapsed Bahrain bank formerly controlled by the group, the lawyers said on Thursday.
Trowers & Hamlins, the law firm administering The International Banking Corporation (TIBC) after it was taken over by Bahrain’s central bank, said they filed a suit Wednesday with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency against Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi and Brothers (AHAB) for allegedly unpaid foreign exchange commitments with the bank.
It was the latest in a growing number of suits filed from New York to Dubai in the wake of the split between two prominent Saudi conglomerates — Algosaibi and the Saad group — after the Algosaibis accused Saad chief Maan al-Sanea of stealing more than 10 billion dollars from them last year.
While details remain murky, the breakup of the once closely aligned groups has become one of the Gulf’s largest scandals to emerge from the global financial meltdown in 2008-2009.
The lawyers said their action was the first in a series of suits against the Algosaibis, one of Saudi Arabia’s most prominent business groups, to reclaim TIBC assets after the bank defaulted on billions of dollars of obligations last year.
“The claim we have launched … follows unsatisfactory responses from AHAB and their representatives to questions relating to the assets of TIBC that we have repeatedly asked them,” Abdullah Mutawi of Trowers & Hamlins said in a statement.
“These claims form the first in a series of litigation proceedings which will be brought in a variety of jurisdictions around the world against those debtors of TIBC including AHAB,” which the statement was the single biggest debtor, owing 3.2 billion dollars.”
The lawyers said they had also recently filed suits in Saudi Arabia against the Saad group units and individuals for defaulting on 171 million dollars in loans from TIBC.
—Agencies