KUWAIT: A Kuwaiti financier facing a fraud suit by US authorities was found dead on Sunday in an apparent suicide that sent shockwaves through the Gulf financial sector.
A security source told Reuters that Hazem Al-Braikan appeared to have died from a single gunshot wound to the side of the head, while a policeman standing outside Al-Braikan’s house said the well-connected financier, 37, had shot himself.
Al-Braikan was the chief executive of Al Raya Investment, which is 10 percent owned by Citigroup Inc., and had been at the center of a financial scandal that erupted last week.
“It’s very sad news. This crisis has seen a lot of people in the Gulf and across the world fall from grace, and each person is different in terms of their ability to handle pressure,” said Mohammed Yasin, chief executive of Dubai-based investment bank Shuaa Securities.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against him and two other finance firms last week, saying they had improperly earned millions of dollars from trades in two US firms, Harman International Industries Inc. and Textron Inc.
A policeman at Al-Braikan’s two-story villa in the Kuwait City neighborhood of Al-Rawda told Reuters that Al-Braikan’s brother had called for help. An employee at Al Raya said Al-Braikan, who was single, had not come to work on Sunday.
“We are shocked. Everybody is shocked,” the employee said by telephone. “We called his brother, and he confirmed the news. He was here at the office yesterday until 7 or 8 at night. I don’t know why he decided to end it.”
Reached by Reuters on Saturday, Al-Braikan declined to comment on the case. “I have nothing to say. It is in the hands of the lawyers now.”
In papers filed in Manhattan federal court last week, the SEC said Al-Braikan and entities linked to him earned more than $5 million from well-timed trades in the two US firms.
Other defendants include United Gulf Bank and KIPCO Asset Management Co (KAMCO). Both are part of the Kuwait Projects Co (KIPCO) group. All the firms have denied the allegations.
KIPCO is the biggest investment firm by assets in Kuwait. KAMCO and United Gulf Bank said on Friday they made no gain from trading in the shares of Harman and Textron.
Shares in KIPCO slid 3.5 percent on the Kuwaiti bourse on Sunday, on the first trading day after the lawsuit was filed.
The SEC said it obtained an emergency court order freezing the trading profits in US accounts held by Al-Braikan and the other firms. An SEC official said an investigation began soon after it learned about a takeover hoax last Monday. Harman shares briefly soared after several media outlets reported that a private investment firm called Arabian Peninsula Group planned to buy it at almost double its market price. The incident was similar to a phony offer for Textron in April from a United Arab Emirates-Kuwait consortium.