The former prime minister of Qatar, one of the world’s wealthiest men, could be drawn into a series of high-profile investigations into the awarding of the 2022 World Cup and the controversial billion-pound bailout of Barclays bank if he were stripped of his diplomatic immunity, a court has heard.
Lawyers for Fawaz al-Attiya, a British citizen and former official spokesman of the emirate, claimed that Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, had taken up a position as a diplomat in London after leaving office to shield himself from claims that he was responsible for their client’s kidnap and torture.
Attiya claims that Qatari agents acting on behalf of Thani, who is commonly known as HBJ, ordered his false imprisonment in Doha for 15 months beginning in 2009 and subjected him to conditions amounting to torture.
The claims are rejected by HBJ, whose lawyers say the “extremely serious allegations are, without exception, a combination of distortion, exaggeration and wholesale fabrication”.
At the high court, Thomas de la Mare QC, acting for Attiya, said that HBJ had invested billions in Barclays bank, a transaction for which the bank was now being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office, and that he was “intimately involved” in Qatar’s successful bid for the football World Cup in 2022.
“The [Barclays] investments were subject to a high profile SFO investigation against Barclays bank which one would anticipate the defendant [HBJ] would be a highly significant witness if called,” said de la Mare. “Immunity was operating in a context … arising with Barclays and indeed the World Cup.”
HBJ, who has a personal fortune of £8bn, stood down as Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister in June 2013. He has appeared on the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) diplomatic list as a “minister-counsellor” serving in the London embassy and has remained on the diplomatic list.
Monica Carss-Frisk QC, who is acting for HBJ, said the FCO had confirmed that his appointment – which focused on economic relations – began on 6 November 2013. As a minister-counsellor, he would have legal immunity under the Vienna convention of 1961.
In court, de la Mare claimed that HBJ had in fact never taken up his position in the embassy. The lawyer described the appointment as a sham. “[HBJ] had never been to the Foreign Office, never gone to the London embassy or attended the ambassador’s reception and ate the Ferrero Rocher chocolates on offer.”
Instead, he argued, that HBJ spent his time pursuing personal business deals – breaching the terms of the Vienna convention which forbids engaging in commercial activity for personal profit. Court papers claim that HBJ held “beneficiary” ownership of key London hotels and had purchased an oil company in London for £1bn while a diplomat.
“There is no doubt that he was engaged in substantial commercial activity in the UK and when not here he was engaged in it elsewhere. He bought a stake in Deutsche Bank and bought Spanish department store El Corte Ingles,” said de la Mare.
He added that HBJ’s Instagram account showed he spent much of his time when not doing deals on holidays in exotic locations such as Marrakech, Mumbai and the Maldives. The judge, Justice Blake, drew laughs in court by asking whether Instagram was a “social media account”.
However, Carss-Frisk said such claims were irrelevant as Qatar had freely appointed the billionaire as a diplomat and that this had been confirmed by the FCO, which had been made aware of claims of business activity. “The Qatari ambassador and foreign minister and the foreign office all say he was appointed as a diplomat,” she said.
She added it was wrong to suggest HBJ could not claim diplomatic immunity under the Vienna convention and argued that the court should speak with one voice with the government “on such a matter of international relations”.
She told the judge that if the court decided to remove HBJ’s immunity there might be “many, many cases of spurious allegations by reference to Instagram over whether diplomats are exercising their diplomatic functions or not. It makes the whole thing unworkable”.
Blake said that the issue he had to consider was whether the Foreign Office officials had taken an “ultra vires” step in claiming HBJ had “enjoyed the privileges and immunities of a member of the diplomatic staff of a mission”.
The judge reserved judgement and will make a ruling at a later date.
