UAE Wins Dismissal of Oil Trader’s Lawsuit Alleging Smears
(Bloomberg) — The United Arab Emirates won dismissal of a lawsuit by an oil trader who alleged the state directed a smear campaign that pushed his company into bankruptcy.
The lawsuit, filed in January 2024 by oil trader Hazim Nada, claimed that his company, Lord Energy SA, was targeted by a misinformation campaign orchestrated by Swiss private investigative firm Alp Services SA, and ultimately directed by the UAE and its president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed.
US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that the UAE is immune from the suit under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. She also dismissed other defendants, including Alp, on various legal grounds.
“Notwithstanding its length and unnecessary detail, the amended complaint is nothing more than a defamation case in search of a legal theory,” Jackson wrote Tuesday in Washington federal court. “It is also an action in search of a basis to require a foreign sovereign and other foreign entities and individuals to defend themselves in the United States.”
The complaint, based on more than 8,000 hacked documents, shone light on the world of private intelligence agencies for hire. Nada alleged that Alp hired journalists and academics to write articles falsely accusing Lord Energy of being a front company to fund terrorist organizations, which led its banks to stop working with it. The company declared bankruptcy in April 2019.
Nada, a 43-year-old citizen of Italy and the US, said he was disappointed by the ruling and is considering an appeal.
“We’re basically telling foreign governments that it’s OK to work in a way where you appoint a third party to do the dirty work for you,” Nada said in an interview. “It’s become a modus operandi for all these states to do the dirty job by hiding behind consultants and mercenaries, so where are we going?”
Nada said he is trying to restart Lord Energy, but he said “it’s tricky with all the things that have happened.”
The UAE embassy in Washington and Alp didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Nada formed Lord Energy in 2008 to trade coal, grain, cement and steel, and he expanded into oil in 2014. His lawsuit claims that the business was seen as a threat by the UAE and its state oil company, Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., in the spot market for light crude oil in Asia. He sought $2.8 billion in damages.
The lawsuit claimed Nada didn’t know the “scope and scale” of the campaign against him and his company until hackers “obtained tens of thousands of documents from Alp’s servers and shared some of them” with him in April 2021, according to the opinion.
The story of the smear campaign against Nada and Lord Energy was the subject of a New Yorker article in 2023.
The case is Nada v. United Arab Emirates, 24-cv-00206, US District Court, District of Columbia.
(Updates in sixth paragraph with Nada comments.)
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