Charles Russell advises on multi-million dollar litigation

Charles Russell's Middle East Real Estate and Litigation teams have secured a successful judgment in the Bahrain Chamber for Dispute Resolution (BCDR) for Barwa Investment SPC, an investment arm of the Qatari Sovereign Wealth fund, against Inovest (a shariah compliant investment company listed on the Bahraini bourse) and its sister company Al Khaleej Development Company (Defendants). 

The BCDR judgment, handed down earlier this year, accepted that Barwa had been misled by the Defendants when they invested in Dannat, a Cayman based fund vehicle set up and controlled by the Defendants to help finance a substantial property development in Saudi Arabia. The Defendants had circulated a Private Placement Memorandum (PPM) in 2008 to secure third party investment into Dannat and based upon the information provided to them Barwa advanced a total of USD 16,000,000. 

After a litigation process lasting over a year, the BCDR held that the entire investment of BHD 6,000,000 should be returned to Barwa with a compensation rate of 1.5 per cent to be applied from the date of the investment in early 2009. The BCDR also awarded Barwa discretionary damages of USD795,700. 

The team at Charles Russell was led by John Sykes and Simon Green.