In a shocking story that was revealed last week, it was confirmed that the disgraced United Arab Emirates based ship recycling mogul, Muhammad Tahir Lakhani, tricked a well-known senior Emirati official into sponsoring his business development interests in the UAE.
Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Shayeb Al-Naqbi, Director General of the Department of Economic Development (DED) in Ras Al Khaimah (RAK), is the main sponsor of Mr. Lakhani’s business empire which operates several companies under the umbrella of Dubai Trading Agency (‘DTA’), a company owned by himself and his two sons Ali Muhammad Lakhani and Hasan Muhammad Lakhani. Al-Naqbi holds a 51% interest in the company by virtue of the Emirates’ fiduciary control laws.
In October 2020, the British High Court sided against Mohammad Tahir Lakhani and his sons by awarding nearly $77 million in favor of the American private equity firm Yield Street Management LLC. The latter launched a lawsuit against DTA, over a series of multi-million-dollar commercial loans that Yield Street had given to DTA in 2018 and 2019, to purchase de-commissioned commercial vessels for recycling purposes. The loans were fraudulently obtained, never paid in full and DTA reneged on the deal and never purchased any of the craft. The British High Court ruling put a global freeze on Mr. Lakhani and his sons’ assets.
The case has surprisingly not had very much media attention in the UAE to date, and this has put UAE companies and senior Emirati officials (such as Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Shayeb Al-Naqbi) at high risk. Muhammad Tahir Lakhani has been bilking investors and business partners for decades ever since he established DTA in 1985.
This must be highly disturbing to Dr. Naqbi, who is highly regarded in the UAE due to his tireless efforts to boost tourism and other non-oil related market sectors in Ras Al Khaimah. In February this year the RAK DED, under the leadership of Abdulrahman launched a new website to spur local investment in RAK with a primary focus on local tourism.
In addition, Dr, Naqbi was also appointed as a member of the newly created UAE Industry Development Council (IDC) in December 2021 and attended the IDC’s first meeting in January this year. As a key person who has been credited with facilitating strong inter-economic development between all the country’s seven emirates, Dr. Abdulrahman Naqbi is just one of several victims that Muhammad Tahir Lakhani has taken for a ride.
Former employees of DTA speaking on background confirmed that Ali Muhammad Lakhani and Hasan Muhammad Lakhani hired an international reputation management company in late 2020 to “clean up” all the negative media reports covering their fraud. The internet is rife with stories published about the damning British High Court decision that especially lambasted Lakhani’s sons, who had claimed that they were unaware of their father’s intention to defraud Yield Street and its investors.
Ali and Hasan had signed personal guarantees to underwrite the multi-million-dollar loan that Yield Street and its investors gave to DTA and then claimed afterwards that they didn’t understand what they had signed. The presiding Judge (The Honorable Justice Jacobs) admonished both the Lakhani brothers for trying to play ignorance in the case and stated in his ruling that “the case of Ali and Hasan, to the effect that they did not understand the nature of the guarantees that they were signing, and that they did not realize that they were guaranteeing very significant liabilities under the loans, carries no degree of conviction at all.”
To make matters even worse for the Lakhani family a senior source in the UK’s National Economic Crime Centre (NECC) who spoke in background for this story confirmed over the weekend that Muhammad Tahir Lakhani and his sons, Ali Muhammad Lakhani and Hasan Muhammad Lakhani, were all under current investigation for “fraud, money laundering and other criminal activities that are targeting investors in the United Kingdom the United States and other multijurisdictional locations.”
The senior NECC source also stated that the investigation against the Lakhani family was “prompted by the judgment of High Court and by a complaint made by a former senior employee of one of Mr. Lakhani’s companies in the Middle East who now resides in London.”
With the Lakhani family’s legal problems quickly growing in the UK, and the embarrassment that Muhammad Tahir Lakhani has caused to H.E. Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Shayeb Al-Naqbi (and other respected business leaders in the Emirates) there are calls for the UAE’s Financial Intelligence Unit to fully investigate DTA and all members of the Lakhani family.
The former employees of DTA pointed out that the judgement of the High Court against Ali Muhammad Lakhani and Hasan Muhammad Lakhani in October 2020 justifies such an investigation. They also noted that the UAE will often put an end to the criminal activities of crime families that sully the reputation of senior officials such as Dr. Naqbi.
