UK publisher set to release book on Abraaj

LONDON: A book on Abraaj Group and its founder Arif Naqvi, the Karachi born businessman who the US government wants to extradite from London in relation to the collapse of the equity firm, is set to be published next month.

‘The Life and Death of the Abraaj Group: Arif Naqvi, a Key Man or the Fall Guy’, published by Biteback Publishing, has been written by Brian Brivati, a visiting professor at Kingston University who taught human rights and life writing full time until 2019.

According to a press release issued by Biteback, one of the most successful investments of Abraaj had been in Karachi Electric, the sale of which had been agreed to a Chinese energy giant and a sizable chunk of that new fund was going to come from Chinese investors.

In his investigation based on extensive documentary research and dozens of interviews with the key players, Brivati sets out to provide rather different answers to the five key questions that comprise this tale: who benefited and who suffered from the slowing and stopping of the sale of Karachi Electric to the Chinese? If Abraaj was an organised criminal conspiracy what exactly was stolen? Who benefited and who suffered from the collapse of Abraaj? Who picked up the pieces of investments in the emerging and growth markets where Abraaj was dominant and who paid the price? How did the different actors in this story behave both inside Abraaj and from external agencies?

Biteback Publishing said the book on Arif Naqvi has been legally vetted and cleared in the UK and will be published on 20th July.