A British judge has thrown out a claim by a former chief executive of United Al Saqer Group (UAS) for AED 111 million ($30m) compensation after alleging he was forced out of the Abu Dhabi conglomerate and threatened with deportation.
Ahmad Abdel Rahman Nimer, 59, was appointed to the top job in 2011 but claims he was sidelined after falling out with executives at the $8 billion group, which includes car dealerships, catering services, finance operations and hotels. The former accountant said he was forced to quit five years later with only a small amount of what was owed to him.
Mr Nimer said that he only signed a termination agreement in 2016 with UAS because he feared he could have been detained or kicked out of the UAE. The company and senior executives denied the claims against them.
The Canadian-Jordanian executive took his case against the company, the chairman and his three sons to London’s High Court but the defendants asked the judge to rule on jurisdiction.
A judge ruled on Monday that Mr Nimer’s evidence had been “unreliable” and he had not been able to show he would not get a fair hearing in the UAE.
“I can easily credit that the claimant would regard them as formidable opponents whom he would much prefer to sue in England than in the UAE,” said the judge, Richard Davison. “But the evidence does not persuade me that there is in fact a real risk that the claimant would not receive a fair trial in the UAE.”
The court was told that Mr Nimer was recruited by UAS chairman Sheikh Mohammed bin Butti Al Hamed and worked very closely with him until the relationship deteriorated. He was transferred to a construction subsidiary and claimed he was barred from UAS headquarters.
Mr Nimer, a former partner at the international accountancy firm Deloitte, cited the alleged experiences of two other former UAS chief executives who he said had also been unfairly targeted by the board.
He claimed that his predecessor – who was found to have misappropriated assets on a “large scale” after an internal audit – had been targeted in a plot to bring him back to the UAE via the United States after he moved to Canada.
The judge said his claim of a rendition plot was “implausible”.
“A kidnap and rendition from Canada and the US would be liable to raise a major international incident with extremely serious consequences for the participants,” he said in his judgment.
“It is intrinsically unlikely that these defendants truly contemplated it or that they could have thought that officers and agents of UAS, whose knowledge and cooperation would be necessary, would go along with it.”
Mr Nimer’s legal team was not immediately available for comment. It was not clear if he would appeal or pursue his compensation claim in the UAE.
