Khadem Al Qubaisi, the Emirati-born chairman of the Hakkasan Group — which in three short years has become a top global nightclub and restaurant brand and the No. 1 player in Las Vegas — has resigned, The Post has learned.
The news comes as the US Justice Department’s kleptocracy asset recovery initiative program — and probes in six other countries across three continents — continues its look into the 44-year-old businessman, sources said.
Al Qubaisi was fired from his job as head of an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, International Petroleum Investment Co., known as IPIC.
The businessman — outed by The Post as the secret buyer of a $50 million Manhattan penthouse — had also been detained by Abu Dhabi authorities, according to reports.
United Arab Emirates authorities froze Al Qubaisi’s personal assets and issued a travel ban, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.
Under Al Qubaisi’s watch, IPIC reportedly went from having a $70 billion capital base to having one totaling less than $15 billion. Al Qubaisi’s Tasameem Real Estate is the controlling shareholder of the Hakkasan Group, according to UK regulatory filings.
Ronald Richards, a lawyer for Hakkasan Chief Executive Neil Moffitt, told The Post that Al Qubaisi resigned “in the past few weeks” — but declined to say why he left.
Richards also maintains that neither Al Qubaisi nor his US lieutenant Mohamed Al Husseiny had his personal assets frozen or was ever under a travel ban in the UAE, contrary to what the WSJ reported.
The global probes are examining the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of billions of dollars from the sovereign fund, 1 Malaysia Development Bhd., or 1MDB, after it raised $6.5 billion in three separate bond offerings.
Among the subjects of the probes:
- The role played by Goldman Sachs, which helped set up the fund and earned unusually high fees for its work
- Al Husseiny
- Malaysian businessman and former New York party boy Jho Low
- Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak, 1MDB’s sole shareholder
- Razak’s Hollywood-film producing stepson, Riza Aziz.
None of the subjects of the probes have been implicated or charged with any wrongdoing.
The probes are helping to shine a spotlight on the secretive and murky world of sovereign wealth funds.
Separately, former Goldman highflier Tim Leissner, who left the bank under a cloud earlier this year, was brought down by his ties to Low, a new report reveals.
Goldman said last month it suspended Leissner, the bank’s Singapore-based chairman for Southeast Asia, after it discovered he wrote an “inaccurate and unauthorized” reference letter.
The firm didn’t say who the beneficiary of Leissner’s letter was.
But the banker — who has since left Goldman — wrote the letter on behalf of Low, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
