Sahara gets relief from US court

A US court rejected a plea for attachment of the Sahara group's two hotels - Plaza and Dream Downtown - in New York. Hong Kong-based JTS Trading had approached the court, seeking the attachment as part of its $350-million lawsuit against United Arab Emirates-based Trinity White City Ventures, Sahara group and Swiss banking giant UBS over a deal that went sour.

While hearings will continue on the suit, the Supreme Court of the State of New York has said, "The application of plaintiff JTS Trading Ltd for a pre-judgment order of attachment is denied."

Sahara, along with two others, were dragged into the lawsuit filed by JTS Trading, which claims that it had proposed to partner Trinity and arrange loans from UBS to acquire Sahara's three overseas hotels - Grosvenor House in London and the two in the US. JTS has alleged that Trinity cut it off from the estimated $1.5 billion deal for direct negotiations with Sahara. It accused Sahara and UBS of having "aided and abetted" Trinity in breaching its "fiduciary duties" under their agreement.

"We welcome the Supreme Court's decision which understood our claims in the pious light of justice and protected us from becoming a victim of unscrupulous litigation, which aimed at falsely and unfairly dragging us into a private dispute between two parties who have had a falling out," a Sahara group spokesperson said.

JTS also filed an application before the court seeking a 'pre-judgement order of attachment' of Sahara group's interest in the two hotels in the US. Seeking an immediate rejection of the attachment plea, Sahara submitted before the court that the "plaintiff is attempting to attach property that falls outside of the jurisdiction of this court" and the assets did not belong to the parties of the case.

After looking into the oral and written submissions of JTS and Sahara in the matter, the court has now said in an order dated September 14 that "JTS fails to establish entitlement to attach assets of the non-parties". "JTS' only claim in support of attaching non-party interests is that it is entitled to pierce the corporate veil to reach these assets," the court order said, while adding that JTS, however, failed to establish an entitlement to pierce the corporate veil.