Brad Pitt linked architecture firm sues Zabeel Investments
German firm Graft takes Dubai Crown Prince owned investment company to court over unpaid fees
Graft Gesellschaft von Architekten, the German architecture firm that collaborated with Hollywood star Brad Pitt to design a luxury hotel and resort in Dubai, has said it will sue Zabeel Investments for fees owed to it from the project.
The firm claims that the investment firm, which is owned by Dubai’s Crown Prince, Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed al Maktoum, owes it unpaid fees of $1.79mn, a report by Zawya Dow Jones said.
“Services were provided and approved and only partially paid for,” said Ludmila Yamalova, a Dubai based attorney representing Graft in the court proceedings. She added that Zabeel had agreed to pay $9.2mn for the design, but had only given Graft $7.48mn of the money owned.
The report said that Mazen Boustany, the lawyer representing Zabeel, had not responded to requests for comments.
Zabeel has been undergoing a process of debt restructuring following the collapse of Dubai’s property market in 2009. Earlier this year, the firm had reached a $956mn debt deal with lenders. It owes in the region of $1.6bn to local banks.
Yamalova said that Zabeel had engaged Graft in 2007, paying a retainer fee and making further instalments for design work on a hotel complex that was to be located in Dubailand.
In 2008, the investment firm said that Brad Pitt would be amongst Graft’s team of design consultants on the project.
“Selecting this development as my first major construction project has been a simple decision,” Pitt said in a statement released at the time. “It will underpin not only my values for environmentally friendly architecture, but also embrace my career in entertainment.”
However, Yamalova declined to confirm if Pitt would have a role in Graft’s lawsuit against Zabeel, although she pointed out that the actor and the architecture firm had collaborated on a number of projects across the globe, including building his home in Los Angeles.
“Graft and Brad go way back,” she said, “They have been close friends and collaborators on projects for many years. They’re very good friends and they are close partners.”
She added that the hotel project was called ‘Hotel America’ and that it had gone through many stages of design before being dropped.
Hearings have yet to begin in the court case, which was filed on October 24 but was only recently made public.
