MIAMI – A Florida man recently filed a suit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida seeking more that $17 million from Saudi Arabia and members of the royal family.
Mark P. Arzuman filed the suit Aug. 9 seeking the damages, claiming he had a business partnership with Prince Bander Bin Saud Bin Saad Bin Abdulrahman Al Saud (Bin).
In his lawsuit, Arzuman said he worked with Bin since 1982 on a number of business ventures in Florida and other states, as well as in Germany and Saudi Arabia. The ventures include the purchase and development of real property, purchase and retail businesses, the training and breeding professional jumping horses, marketing a commercial marina in Obhor, Saudi Arabia, and lending money for mortgages.
The suit names Bin and his father, Prince Saud Bin Saad Bin Abdulrahman – both of whom are now dead. The lawsuit also includes Prince Nawwaf Bin Saud Saad Bin Abdulrahman Al Saud (Nawwaf), the younger brother of the deceased prince who inherited everything after the death of Bin, the lawsuit stated.
The other individual mentioned in the lawsuit is Shamsah Saud, mother of the deceased prince and also mother of Nawwaf, the heir.
The lawsuit said all the individuals in the lawsuit are Saudi citizens and members of the royal family, therefore the Saudi kingdom or the Saudi government is fully responsible for the the actions of the members.
“The harm caused is criminal because the deceased prince Bin was a lawful U.S. resident and the actions undertaken by the heir Nawwaf was to avoid to pay taxes on sales of the assets, of the horses and all the profits made by the sale of horses and interest earned on the mortgages that amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars,” the lawsuit stated.
Additionally, the lawsuit mentioned a deposit of more than $3 million dollars with Citibank in Geneva. “This account was earning $9,000 a month which the beneficiary Prince Nawwaf never paid any interest to the IRS,” the lawsuit stated. “This is tax evasion and a felony.”
The lawsuit said the court should rule that the Saudi government is fully responsible for the “felonious acts committed in the states against plaintiff Mark Arzuman who is a U.S. citizen.”
“Arzuman should be compensated for all the damages incurred and inflicted on the plaintiff Mark by the members of the Saudi royal family,” the lawsuit stated.
The lawsuit stated that Nawwaf misappropriated all the proceeds of the mortgage by Mogbel Al. Suraihi, second secretary of the Saudi Arabian Embassy in France at the time.
A contractual agreement made by Bin and Arzuman were not respected by Nawwaf who was supposed to pay $100,000 to Arzuman every year after the death of Bin, according to the lawsuit.