The High Court in London scheduled to hear a case next week in which Ahmed Adel Abdallah Ahmed is seeking $42.5 million from Sheikh Hamad Isa Ali al-Khalifa for allegedly ending an exclusive agreement to set up meetings with 26 Bollywood stars – including Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt and Anil Kapoor.

Sheikh Hamad Isa Ali al-Khalifa

Sheikh Hamad Isa Ali al-Khalifa is a distant cousin of the king of Bahrain. He is also a nephew of the deputy prime minister of Bahrain.  Sheikh Hamad Isa Ali al-Khalifa, believed to be in his fifties and is alleged to have a long-standing fascination with Bollywood movies and stars.  He is reputed to have been brought up by an Indian nanny.

The pleadings

The papers filed for the case state that the Sheikh agreed to pay $1.5 million per celebrity meeting and a bonus of $500,000 for every third meeting. They add that the Sheikh paid $4 million to Ahmed, who lives in Dubai, through a combination of cash and bank transfers. But it is being alleged that payments of $8.5 million are still outstanding. The papers also allege that the Sheikh asked Ahmed’s firm, CBSC Events & Exhibition and Conference Organizers, to sponsor a film awards event in Dubai in March 2016 so that the Sheikh could attend the function, meet Indian stars, and present at least one award but the Sheikh subsequently refused to pay a promised amount of $500,000 for the film awards event. 

Denial

The Sheikh denies any legally binding agreement. In his defense pleadings to the court, Sheikh Hamad Isa Ali al-Khalifa says that he felt unfair pressure and that Mr. Ahmed was “making unwarranted demands for very large sums of money and seeking to arrange meetings which were not convenient.”