US judge dismisses lawsuit over alleged Swiss-linked smear campaign

A Washington judge has shut down a $2.8 billion lawsuit accusing the UAE and a Swiss investigative firm of helping destroy an oil trader’s business. Judge Amy Berman Jackson dismissed Hazim Nada’s complaint in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, ruling that the United Arab Emirates was protected by sovereign immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. She also dismissed claims against Alp Services and other defendants on separate legal grounds.

The decision closes the latest courtroom phase of a dispute that has drawn attention to Switzerland’s private intelligence industry and the use of third parties in international influence campaigns. Nada claimed that Alp Services, based in Switzerland, helped spread false allegations about his company, Lord Energy. He said the campaign caused banks to sever relationships with the business, which filed for bankruptcy in April 2019.

Jackson described the amended complaint as “a defamation case in search of a legal theory” and said it lacked a basis to force a foreign sovereign and other foreign parties to defend themselves in the United States. Nada said he was disappointed and is considering an appeal. The case is Nada v. United Arab Emirates, 24-cv-00206.

The case turned on sovereign immunity before the court reached the full substance of Nada’s allegations against the UAE. Jackson ruled that the United Arab Emirates could not be sued on the claims brought under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The statute generally shields foreign states from US lawsuits unless a recognised exception applies.

The judge also rejected the case against Alp Services and other defendants on different legal grounds. The ruling means the complaint will not proceed to a trial in Washington, where Nada had hoped to establish that the UAE and its president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, directed a campaign against Lord Energy.

Nada’s filing alleged that the campaign targeted his company because it was competing in the Asian spot market for light crude oil. He identified Abu Dhabi National Oil, the UAE state oil company, as part of the commercial context behind the alleged pressure. The ruling did not validate those accusations. It resolved whether the claims could move forward against the named parties in the US court.

The UAE embassy in Washington and Alp Services did not respond to requests for comment reported by Bloomberg. The dismissal leaves Nada with the possibility of an appeal, although the source does not specify the grounds or timetable for one.

More than 8,000 hacked documents formed the evidentiary backbone of Nada’s complaint. According to the court opinion, hackers obtained tens of thousands of files from Alp Services servers and shared some of them with Nada in April 2021. He said the material revealed the scale of an operation he had not previously understood.

Nada alleged that Alp hired journalists and academics to publish articles accusing Lord Energy of acting as a front to finance terrorist organisations. He argued that the allegations damaged the company’s reputation and prompted its banks to stop working with it. Lord Energy subsequently declared bankruptcy in April 2019, before Nada received the hacked documents.

The allegations placed a Swiss private investigative company at the centre of a wider debate over commercial intelligence, reputation management and covert influence. Alp Services was accused in the lawsuit of operating as an intermediary between political interests and the people producing public material. The company did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.

The story had already reached a broad international audience through a 2023 New Yorker article about the alleged campaign. The dismissal does not provide a judicial finding that the campaign occurred as Nada described it. It does, however, preserve public interest in the documents, the private actors named in them and the methods used to shape reputations across borders.