Saudi billionaire, Prince Alwaleed
bin Talal, has sued Forbes magazine for libel in a British court,
alleging its valuation of his wealth at $20 billion was short of the
mark by $9.6 billion, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported yesterday. 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 journalists 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 the 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
comments, 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 and criticized 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 journalists 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 United
Kingdom, 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.
“In the U.S, a high-profile claimant has
to prove firstly that the article was untrue and secondly that the
publisher knew that the article was untrue which is what we call malice.
Those are two hurdles that a UK libel action does not present,” said
Coad who is not involved in the Prince Alwaleed case.
Under British libel law, a claimant has
only to prove that a publication was defamatory. Then the burden of
proof passes to the defendant who has several possible defences,
including that the publication was true.
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