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Dubai shaikh’s lawyer rejects lawsuit as baseless

DUBAI - The defence lawyer for a Dubai shaikh being sued by an Iranian businessman over 1.9 billion dollars in property investments on Monday rejected the lawsuit as baseless.

“All his allegations and the sums that he claims to have pumped into the company are unfounded,” lawyer Samir Jaafar told AFP after the third hearing in the case.

Shahram Abdullah Zadeh has filed the 1.9-billion-dollar case against Shaikh Hasher Maktoum bin Jumaa al-Maktoum and the Dubai-based real estate developer Al-Fajer Properties.

Zadeh insists he was the real owner and sole investor in Al-Fajer, which is registered under the name of Shaikh Hasher, a brother-in-law of Dubai’s ruler, Shaikh Mohammad bin Rashid al-Maktoum.

“There are surprises in the documents that we have presented to the court which will turn the case upside down,” Shaikh Hasher’s lawyer said, declining to elaborate.

“We believe that the lawsuit will be rejected after the court goes through the documents that we have presented,” Jaafar added.

Legal sources close to the case, asking not to be named, said the defence has charged that the sums which Zadeh says he invested in the company were in fact the “company’s money that he misused to appear as if it was his own.”

Zadeh, for his part, demands the “recovery of all material assets of Al-Fajer Properties,” according to legal documents obtained by AFP.

These include liquid assets and property, which are estimated at seven billion dirhams (1.9 billion dollars), and nine percent interest since the suit was filed.

His lawyer Salim al-Shaali, who asked the judge for time to study the defence document, said that at the next hearing on May 25 he will ask for an auditor to be appointed to look into the company’s accounts.

“The expert would decide who pumped capital into the company and ... whether the defendants paid any money,” he told AFP.

Zadeh charges Shaikh Hasher made no investment in Al-Fajer and that he acquired the licence under the Shaikh’s name only because Emirati law does not allow non-Gulf citizens to register real estate firms under their own names.

“For every dirham that Shaikh Hasher can show the court he has invested in Al-Fajer Properties, I will give him the company and an extra 10 million-dollar bonus,” he told AFP after the latest hearing, which he did not attend.

He said he started up the company from scratch, pumping in cash ”as and when the company needed,” and that he only withdrew part of his initial investments after the company expanded from property sales.

“The Shaikhs claim I was an employee,” said Zadeh.