The High Court has today delivered judgment in Ras Al Khaimah Investment Authority (RAKIA) v Farhad Azima, a multimillion pound fraud and conspiracy claim which featured as one of The Lawyer’s Top 20 cases of 2020. In its judgment, the Court has held that Mr Azima, a prominent US businessman with many years’ experience in the aviation industry, committed “seriously fraudulent conduct” against RAKIA including bribery, making fraudulent misrepresentations, creating sham documents and participating in an unlawful conspiracy to misappropriate large sums of money from RAKIA. The court ordered Mr Azima to pay damages of more than $4 million. The court also rejected Mr Azima’s allegation that RAKIA was responsible for hacking the documents on which the claim was based.
Hugh Tomlinson QC and Edward Craven represented the successful claimant, RAKIA.
A copy of the judgment is available here.