A lawsuit brought by Hazim Nada, owner of Lord Energy SA, a privately owned oil company, seeking over $1 billion in damages against the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a Swiss investigative firm and its employees, a Swiss journalist, and an American academic, has been dismissed by a US court. Nada and Lord Energy accused the defendants of conspiring to eliminate Lord Energy as a competitor to the UAE's state-owned oil company in the Asian spot market for light crude oil. The plaintiffs alleged that this conspiracy involved a years-long "dark" public relations campaign that falsely associated Lord Energy with the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda.
The alleged smear campaign, which began in 2017, resulted in financial institutions refusing to lend money to Lord Energy, leading to the bankruptcy of Lord Energy and its U.S. subsidiary, Americas Lord Energy. The plaintiffs claim they lost hundreds of millions of dollars, with Lord Energy valued at approximately $150 million before the campaign began. They asserted that the UAE, acting through its president and two officials, hired Swiss private investigative firms Alp Services S.A. and Diligence SARL to conduct the campaign. This included generating Wikipedia pages in multiple languages and using search engine optimization to spread false information.
The court granted the UAE's motion to dismiss due to foreign sovereign immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, ruling that no statutory exception applied. Motions to dismiss from the Alp defendants and Swiss journalist Sylvain Besson were also granted for lack of personal jurisdiction. Additionally, American academic Lorenzo Vidino's motion to dismiss was granted because the sole count against him failed to state a claim of his involvement in the alleged conspiracy. The court found the complaint to be essentially a defamation case attempting to find a legal theory, lacking sufficient grounds to require foreign entities to defend themselves in the U.S.
