BBC iPlayer - Billion Dollar Downfall: The Dealmaker

[forrado]

Just to share with you my most recent evening viewing …

Billion Dollar Downfall: The Dealmaker

Available to watch on the BBC iPlayer for the coming 10 months.

How Arif Naqvi, a Pakistani businessman and founder and chief executive of the Dubai-based private equity firm, The Abraaj Group, was welcomed at the White House, entertained the great and the good at Davos, met billionaires like Bill and Melinda Gates and counted cricket luminaries Imran Khan and Henry Blofeld as friends. Silent since his 2019 dawn arrest at Heathrow Airport, the tycoon is now seen and heard for the first time as he remains under London house arrest while his lawyers continue to fight his extradition to the US.

Arif Naqvi called himself the ‘flag carrier of impact investing’ - the idea that you can get rich while doing good in the World. His $14bn firm Abraaj invested across the developing world, improving businesses and building hospitals. Then it collapsed - the world’s biggest-ever private equity failure. Now accused of fraud and racketeering, Naqvi maintains his innocence but, if found guilty, faces 291 years in a US jail. So, what went wrong?