Last year, following a six-day trial, Safa Abdulla Al Geabury, 52, an Iraqi-born Swiss national, was sentenced to 10 months in jail for refusing to pay .2 million he owed the Ritz Hotel Casino in London. The hotel sued Al Geabury after he paid for more than ?2 million in gambling chips in February 2014 with a check that later bounced. Judge Robin Spencer also ordered Al Geabury subject to a worldwide freeze order of ?2.6 million pounds.
Since the sentencing, Spencer said Al Geabury has “deliberately done nothing to comply,” although “he was, and is, a man of immense capital wealth.” Yet “all attempts to enforce the judgment have been fruitless,” the judge said at a recent hearing. Spencer said the hotel hoped it would be repaid through the sale of more than $1 billion of Islamic art, which Al Geabury said he owned during the trial. But later Al Geabury, in a written statement, said the art actually was owned by his uncle and he—wrongly—expected to inherit it.
Al Geabury also said he was homeless and was staying with a friend in Switzerland, and was too poor to attend the trial in the U.K. He said he had suffered with depression and anxiety following last year’s trial. “I did not deliberately or knowingly ignore the court’s orders,” he stated.
