Al Sanea fails to overturn $9.2bn freezing order

A legal dispute has opened in the English courts, with Maan Al Sanea failing to overturn a $9.2bn freezing order on his worldwide assets, it was reported on Tuesday.

The High Court eased the order to allow the embattled billionaire $4m spending money a year after a hearing in which Al Sanea rejected fraud allegations and outlined living expenses including a private zoo and utility bills of $800,000 a month, the UK's Financial Times reported.

The battle in London is part of the increasingly public falling out between Mr Sanea’s Saad Group and Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi and Brothers (Ahab), also a troubled conglomerate, which between them are estimated to owe dozens of regional and international banks $20bn, the paper added.

Al Sanea denied for the first time in detail allegations made by Ahab in lawsuits in New York, the Cayman Islands and London that he oversaw a fraud of up to $10bn while an executive of the company.

“Mr al Sanea utterly rejects those allegations and disputes those allegations. There is simply no truth in them whatsoever,” Tom Beazley QC, his lawyer, said in comments published by the UK paper.

Mr Justice Simon turned down Al Sanea’s request to set aside an asset-freezing order secured by Ahab in a private High Court hearing last month, after it had won a similar ruling in the Cayman Islands.

The judge adjourned the matter to a further hearing in December.

The judge raised a cap on Mr Sanea’s living expenses from $10,000 a week to $1m a quarter, although even this fell well short of the sum of at least $30m a year that he had requested.

Mr Sanea and his Saad Group have been locked in dispute with the Algosaibis since Ahab filed the New York lawsuit in July accusing Mr Sanea of “looting” and using falsified documents while a senior executive at the Money Exchange, Ahab’s financial division.

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