The investment bank Abraaj Capital offered impact investing in emerging markets like Africa. What seemed at first legit to big international investors turned out to be a huge fraud in which these investors lost USD 1 billion. Now it seems that the damage that Abraaj caused is finally being repaired.
Capital News Africa: From the Trading Floor – Week 3-2022
It’s been four years since the fraudulent investment bank Abraaj Capital collapsed. In the scandal, such prominent investors as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the German government fund DEG Invest, the French government fund Proparco, and the US’ Overseas Private Investment Corporation (Opic) lost USD 1 billion.
The damage to several emerging markets caused by Abraaj’s collapse has not been completely repaired. But at least for the Cleopatra Hospital Group in Egypt, (ISIN: EGS729J1C018), one of Abraaj’s holdings, a solution has emerged. As reported (Capital News Africa, 17 January 2022), an unknown investor wants to acquire a majority stake in Cleopatra, which is the largest privately-owned hospital operator in Egypt.
The reason why it is taking so long to liquidate Abraaj and repair the damage it caused has to do with the complexity of the investment bank. Founded in 2002 by Pakistani businessman Arif Naqvi, Dubai-based Abraaj originally offered an array of investments in emerging markets. Yet Naqvi quickly realised that if he specialised in so-called “impact investments” - where clients seek to make money with altruistic activities - he could attract big international investors like the aforementioned IFC, which is part of the World Bank, or the Gates Foundation.
Naqvi offered these investors opportunities in health care, education and clean energy in emerging markets. According to him, such investments would both reap sensational profits and do a lot of good in those markets. The investors were duly persuaded and Arif Naqvi became somewhat of an international celebrity. He was often sought out as a keynote speaker at the United Nations, the World Economic Forum and other international events.
Gradually, however, doubts began to surface on whether Abraaj’s investments truly did generate the promised returns and whether they did any good at all. Interestingly, most of Naqvi’s clients ignored these doubts. As late as April 2015, Naqvi was able to raise USD 990 million for a fund that would invest in the sub-Saharan Africa region.
Indeed, this fund as well as other investment vehicles launched by Abraaj were supposed to allocate as much as USD 1.4 billion to Africa. It turns out that Naqvi allocated just a fraction of the investors’ money to Africa. Most of it was spent on his luxurious lifestyle as well as on buyouts of investors who began to ask uncomfortable questions about what he was actually doing with their money.
Still, most investors stayed with Abraaj and, as a result, financed a fraud that got bigger and bigger. In July 2016, for example, Naqvi announced the launch of a USD 526 million fund for investments in Turkey. Shortly thereafter, he followed up with the announcement of the USD 1 billion “Growth Markets Health Fund.” It is through its investments in health care that Abraaj was be able to acquire a 37.9% stake in Cleopatra, which had been listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange since 2016.
It wasn’t until 2018 that Naqvi’s fraud was finally discovered when Abraaj had to report for the investment bank a huge (and entirely unexpected) loss of USD 188 million for the first nine months of the financial year ending March 31 – and a debt of USD 1.1 billion.
Until the surprising loss, auditors of Abraaj’s accounts had insisted that they found nothing suspicious. But then in November 2021, KPMG’s office in Dubai was hit with a lawsuit seeking USD 600 million in damages. It charged that KPMG had “failed to maintain independence and an appropriate attitude of professional scepticism.”
Naqvi and several other key persons of the Abraaj empire were arrested and the Abraaj Group collapsed. British authorities nabbed Naqvi in April 2019 and indicted him on charges of fraud. In early May 2019, he was granted bail by a London court for GBP 15 million but placed under what was effectively house arrest.
So far, Naqvi has been able to avoid extradition to the US, where prosecutors want to charge him with inflating company assets and fund misappropriation. If he were convicted in the US, he would face a prison sentence of up to 300 years. In Dubai, Naqvi faces a prison sentence of three years if he were to return there.
Although the careers of many managers at Abraaj are as good as over and some are being criminally prosecuted, managers at the investors duped by the huge fraud have, as far as we can tell, not lost their jobs. We also have not been able to find any written evidence that these investors actually regret their decision to go with Abraaj.
The Abraaj scandal has not in any way put a damper on impact investing. On the contrary, private equity has gone from “financial returns-only” to include mandates that also seek to do good. In the EU, fund companies are obliged to set sustainability goals and report progress in achieving them.
On the other hand, the Abraaj scandal has had an impact on investments in Africa, as several international private equity funds have left the continent. Between 2015 and 2017, capital investments in Africa went down from USD 4.5 billion to USD 2.4 billion, respectively. In the first half of 2021, private equity fund raising in Africa reached USD 1.3 billion. This is a little bit more than half of the funds that have been raised throughout the whole year 2017. Capital investments in Africa are stagnating for years.
To read more about the rise and fall of Arif Naqvi, we recommend the book “The Key Man” which was authored by Wall Street Journal reporters Simon Clark and Will Louch. It was published in 2021 by Penguin Random House UK.