Saudi Prince sues
Forbes after it says he’s only worth $20 bn -report
by
Agency Reporter
Saudi billionaire
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has sued Forbes magazine for libel in a British
court, alleging that its valuation of his wealth at 20 billion dollars was
short of the mark .Read more
Alwaleed said the
valuation was short of the mark by 9.6 billion dollars, Britain’s Guardian
newspaper reported on Friday.
The prince, a grandson
of Saudi Arabia’s founder and nephew of King Abdullah, had attacked the U.S.
magazine’s ranking of world billionaires as flawed and biased against Middle
Eastern businesses after he was ranked number 26 in this year’s list.
An official at
the High Court in London confirmed that Prince Alwaleed had filed a defamation
suit against Forbes, its editor Randall Lane, and two of its newsmen on April
30.
Details of the
claim were not immediately available.
Through his
Kingdom Holding Company, Prince Alwaleed owns large stakes in Citigroup, News
Corp and Apple Inc, among other companies.
He is also owner
or part-owner of luxury hotels including the Plaza in New York, the Savoy in
London and the George V in Paris.
This year’s
Forbes World Billionaires list was published on March 4, and the following day
Kingdom Holding said the valuation process used “incorrect data” and “seemed
designed to disadvantage Middle Eastern investors and institutions”.
The public spat
attracted a lot of comment, but Forbes stuck by its estimate of Prince
Alwaleed’s wealth and published an in-depth article in its March 25 issue
entitled “Prince Alwaleed and the curious case of Kingdom Holding stock”.
The article gave
details about how Forbes had arrived at the figure of 20 billion dollars and
criticised what it described as a lack of transparency by Kingdom Holding in
detailing its assets.
The article also
described Prince Alwaleed’s marble-filled, 420-room Riyadh palace, his private
Boeing 747 equipped with a throne, and his 120-acre resort on the edge of the
Saudi capital with five homes, five artificial lakes and a mini-Grand Canyon.
The High Court
official in London said the two newsmen named in the defamation claim were
Kerry Dolan, the author of the article, and Francine McKenna, who was credited
with additional reporting.
No date has been set
for a court hearing in the case, which is in its very early stages, the
official said.
The law firm
Kobre & Kim, which the Guardian said was acting for Prince Alwaleed in the
suit, declined to comment.
New York-based Forbes
could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Guardian
article quoted the magazine as saying: “We’re very surprised at claims that
Prince Alwaleed has decided to sue Forbes, particularly if he has done so in
the UK, a jurisdiction that has nothing whatsoever to do with our recent story
which raised questions about his claims about his wealth.”
Media lawyer
Jonathan Coad, of the London firm Lewis Silkin, said London was seen as a more
attractive place than New York to bring defamation suits because U.S. libel law
made higher requirements of claimants
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