DUBAI: Dubai’s financial regulator said on Tuesday it upheld a $135.6 million fine on collapsed private equity firm Abraaj Group’s founder and former CEO Arif Naqvi “for his serious failings” in respect of the company.

Dubai-based Abraaj was the largest buyout fund in the Middle East and North Africa until it collapsed in 2018 after investors raised concerns about the management of its $1 billion healthcare fund.

The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), the emirate’s financial regulator, on January 27 imposed a ruling which banned Naqvi from the emirate’s financial centre and included a $135 million fine.

Naqvi disputed the findings and presented his case for review by the Financial Markets Tribunal (FMT), an independent appeal tribunal.

The DFSA said at the time that the financial penalty will be stayed pending the decision of the FMT, while the ban on activities at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) will remain enforced.

The DFSA said on Tuesday that the tribunal issued its decision on Dec. 12, which upheld the DFSA’s findings and rejected Naqvi’s FMT reference.

The tribunal found that Naqvi “was centrally involved in a sustained course of unauthorised financial service activities and misleading and deceptive conduct by Abraaj Investment Management Limited (AIML)”, according to the statement.

In July 2019, the DFSA imposed a fine of more than $299 million on AIML for conducting unauthorised activities in or from the DIFC and misusing investors’ monies.

The tribunal also considered that the $135 million penalty against Mr Naqvi was “unusually high but the remuneration … [he] received was high amidst conduct that was exceptionally serious and the cause of what appears to have been unprecedented harm to the entire community of the DIFC”.

The Abraaj Group, which was founded in 2002 and claimed to manage about $14 billion of assets at its peak, was the Middle East’s biggest private equity firm and one of the world’s most active emerging market investors, with interests across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

It was forced into liquidation in 2018 after investors, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, commissioned an audit to investigate the alleged mismanagement of money in its $1bn healthcare fund.

The DFSA found that Naqvi was knowingly involved in misleading and deceiving investors over the misuse of their funds by AIML and had “personally proposed, orchestrated, authorised and executed actions that directly or indirectly misled or deceived the investors”, the regulator said.

“The DFSA’s action against him, which was upheld by the FMT, is important in recognising the nature, scale and seriousness of Mr Naqvi’s misconduct, which ultimately led to the collapse of the Abraaj Group.”