It is the modern day version of Charles Dickens’s interminable Victorian probate case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, that was the gloomy backdrop to his classic novel Bleak House. But this 21st century legal war of attrition involves members of the same immensely wealthy London family — including the owner of Britain’s biggest private contemporary art collection and the Mayfair building that houses Scott’s restaurant — who are locked in the litigation equivalent of hand-to-hand combat in courtrooms on three continents.
Yet remarkably, despite already dragging on for 11 years with no sign of an end, hardly anything has been written about the bitter conflict splitting the publicity-shy Salem dynasty.
Hostilities are set to flare up again at the High Court in London in the autumn in this hugely-complicated and desperately sad family saga. There are few winners, except, with estimated legal fees already approaching £10 million, the lawyers. As one person involved in the proceedings put it: “It is warfare on all fronts.” The story’s origins date to the Thirties when Moussa Salem started a money changing business in Beirut. His four sons, Freddy, Beno, Isaac and Raymond, joined the family firm in the Sixties and Seventies when it branched out into providing export finance for textile traders in Nigeria.
After civil war broke out in Lebanon in 1975 the family fled to London. Their breakthrough came when a family business won the lucrative contract to be the sole distributor of the cigarettes of British American Tobacco (BAT), the multi-national behind the Rothmans, Pall Mall and Benson & Hedges brands, in west Africa’s biggest economy. Their tobacco sales account for an estimated 70 per cent of cigarettes sold in Nigeria.
It is that highly lucrative contract that lies at the heart of the dispute. Isaac left the African business in the Nineties, leaving it in the control of his three brothers. The breakdown in relations appears to have begun around the time of the death of Raymond in 2002 following a stroke in 1997.
That was the point at which his son Moussy, now 51, stepped in to run the business jointly with his two uncles. However, by 2013 relations had soured to the point that Moussy found himself barred from the company’s offices at 80 Grosvenor Street after the locks were changed. As he puts it, his uncles had kicked him out. It was the following year that the dispute spilled over into the legal battle that has involved proceedings in London, New York, Lagos and the British Virgin Islands that are supporting legions of highly-paid lawyers.
The underlying claims and arguments are hugely complex but in essence Moussy believes his family has been illegally cut out of huge flows of income from the Nigerian and other west African businesses that should have rightly been theirs as Raymond’s heirs.
The profits from the cigarette import trade were allegedly funnelled through a Lebanese firm, Gee Trading. Beirut does not have the most transparent company reporting framework but investigations by Moussy’s lawyers suggest that profits running to tens of millions a year have flowed into the company since 2017. Add a bit for inflation and they say there could be close to $1 billion of diverted profits and assets, of which Moussy has staked a claim for a third. He argues that it is “just greed” that has deprived him and his family of a fortune running to hundreds of millions of dollars. Moussy claims: “It feels like I have been robbed.” His uncles, and their expensive legal teams, including top-drawer US firms Steptoe and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, deny that any such profits have existed and reject out of hand Moussy’s demands. The fight, as they say, continues. Moussy who lives with his wife Shireen and their four children in a seven-bedroom mansion in one of the most expensive streets in Hampstead Garden Suburb, says he is prepared to reach a settlement — but insists there is no sign of compromise on the other side.
In the latest round, Moussy issued a winding up petition against Mabani Real Estate Holding Nigeria Ltd, a company that owns the land and premises that the BAT cigarette distributor Great Brands Nigeria Ltd uses to operate. The petition is to be heard in the Federal High Court, Lagos judicial division, in October.
Meanwhile, Beno and Freddy continue to live below the radar of publicity. They were approached for comment but declined. Little is known about Beno although it is believed he has substantial property interests in Chicago, Boston and New York.
However, there is far more in the public domain about London-based Freddy, 83, largely as a result of the extraordinary private art collection amassed by him and his wife Muriel, also originally from Lebanon.
It is housed over four storeys in their John Nash-designed — and David and Gabriel Chipperfield renovated — Grade I-listed mansion at Gloucester Gate, overlooking the Regent’s Park home of the Frieze Art Fair held every October.
The couple are the owners and patrons of the Cranford Collection, officially created in 1999 and now running to more than 700 contemporary art works with many from the Young British Artists movement of the Nineties. Stars such as Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas and Gavin Turk are all strongly represented.
The other jewel in the crown of the family’s London assets is the 21,365 sq ft row of buildings at 14-25 Mount Street in the heart of Mayfair, owned by Frelene Ltd, which Companies House documents suggest is still owned jointly by Freddy, Moussy, and Isaac’s son Philip.
Tenants include Scott’s of Mayfair and retailers such as Christian Louboutin, Pragnell Jewellery, and Maison Rabih Kayrouz. The property was put up for sale for around £100 million in 2015 but the worsening family row led to it being taken off the market.
But none of the trappings of wealth enjoyed by the family can help bridge the painful — and expensive — gulf that has opened up between them. Direct contact between Moussy and his uncles is virtually non-existent. They were conspicuous by their absence when Moussy got married in 2015 and communications are entirely through legal teams.
It is an unfortunate state of affairs for a divided family that could be one of Britain’s greatest success stories. Instead, the lawyers keep collecting their fees for a messy saga that shows no end of coming to a close.
