Hazim Nada, an oil trader, claims that his company Lord Energy was the target of a disinformation campaign organized by the Swiss company Alp Services and orchestrated by the President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed.
According to Hazim Nada’s complaint, Alp hired journalists and academics to write articles falsely accusing Lord Energy of being a front company for terrorist organizations. As a result, the campaign forced banks to stop doing business with Lord Energy, leading to its bankruptcy.
“Lord Energy was founded in 2008. Initially, the company traded in coal, grain, cement and steel, and since 2014 has expanded its activities in the oil sector. Lord Energy’s lawsuit claims that the UAE and its state-owned oil company, Abu Dhabi National Oil Co, viewed the business as a threat to Algerian oil exports to customers in Asia.Hazim Nada claims that there are documents that were provided to him by anonymous hackers after his company went bankrupt. According to them, Alp provided its services for the UAE in 2017, stating that it would use “proven advanced confidential dark PR techniques” to “discredit and embarrass key targets”. In its action plan, Alp promised to “severely damage, if not destroy, the reputation and viability” of Lord Energy.
The owner of the bankrupt company claims that throughout 2018, Alp did as it promised, commissioning articles and blogs, editing Wikipedia entries, and sending tips under pseudonyms to World-Check, a compliance database used by Lord Energy banks.
The history of the smear campaign against Lord Energy was the subject of an article in the New Yorker last year.
The company is now seeking compensation under laws that prohibit false defamation of competitors. It asks the court to award it three times its actual damages, lost profits and disgorgement of the defendants’ profits in the amount of $2.77 billion.
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