Billionaire John Paulson — whose former business partner Fahad Ghaffar has filed a $50 million lawsuit against him alleging fraud — has now hit back with a RICO suit, claiming 21 counts of misconduct and demanding $189.6 million in damages.
The 70-page lawsuit filed by Paulson’s PRV Holdings in the US District Court for the District of Puerto Rico alleges that Ghaffar committed fraud, breach of fiduciary duty and spent $3.4 million of company money on pricey personal expenses like private jets, nightclubs, luxe shopping trips at Chanel and dinner at celebrity hotspot Carbone.
Paulson and Ghaffar worked closely together on several Puerto Rico properties including La Concha Hotel, the Vanderbilt Hotel, the Condado Beach Club, the St. Regis Hotel and the Bahia Beach Resort.
“Between at least 2021 and 2023, Fahad knowingly and willfully embezzled millions of dollars from Plaintiffs’ accounts to fund his lavish lifestyle,” reads the suit which claims Ghaffar, “had 22 American Express credit cards tied to his personal accounts and used them and/or assigned them to other team members as part of his efforts to conceal the nature of his transactions and blend his personal transactions with others to be reimbursed.”
The suit accuses Ghaffar of splashing out $20,000 at the Omnia in Las Vegas on “personal nightclubbing, drinking and partying,” and spending $8,000 on a night out at Marquee in NYC.
The court papers claim he also racked up a huge tab on designer clothing, dropping more than $45,000 on Chanel, and $102,000 “in personal Louis Vuitton purchases in St. Barths.”
The suit further alleges that Ghaffar set up a shell company used to charge Paulson more than $400,000 on private jets, and that he “devised a scheme and artifice to defraud” by adding domestic workers like “babysitters, maids, handymen, and other housekeepers” to the books of a holding company tied to Ghaffar and…
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