The courts of Dubai’s financial centre have decided to hear a long-delayed $600mn claim against KPMG made by the administrators of collapsed private equity firm Abraaj.
The case has been stuck in legal limbo since March 2021, when Abraaj first claimed $600mn in damages for alleged lapses in KPMG’s audit work.
In April 2021, KPMG brought a competing claim against Abraaj in Dubai’s onshore courts. The two sets of proceedings were referred to the Joint Judicial Committee, a legal body that adjudicates on jurisdiction between the local, Arabic-language courts and the common-law, English-language courts of the Dubai International Financial Centre.
Both parties then agreed a stay on DIFC proceedings in January 2022. But the JJC, which has yet to provide its ruling on the KPMG case, has not published a decision since March 2021.
In an online hearing, the DIFC courts’ Justice Wayne Martin last week lifted the stay on the proceedings before the DIFC courts, despite objections from KPMG’s legal team.
“This court can exercise its jurisdiction and, given the inordinate delay [in the JJC ruling], it is very strongly in the interest of justice for this court to do so,” he said.
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