Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris's family seeks $150 million in London fraud trial

The investment arm of Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris's family has told a London court it is owed about $150 million after being duped into financing a foreign exchange business that outsiders secretly controlled and used to extract fees, according to legal news service Law360.

The family office laid out its case on Monday, Oct. 12, at the opening of a trial in the High Court in London, Law360 reported. The claim is being heard in the Commercial Court, the division of the High Court that handles large business disputes, under the name Voltaire Capital Holdings Ltd. and others v. Eric Watson and others.

Barristers' chambers Fountain Court, whose lawyers act for the claimants, describes the case as a complex foreign exchange fraud in which, on the claimants' case, 14 defendants conspired to defraud them of more than $100 million. The chambers lists the hearing as a 10-week trial beginning in October 2026. Earlier reports in New Zealand put the claim at about $100 million to $101 million. Law360 put the amount now claimed at about $150 million. It did not say whether that figure includes interest.

The claim

The claimants include Voltaire Capital Holdings Ltd. and Gemini Investment Holding Ltd., the Sawiris-linked vehicle that put money into Voltaire, according to court filings described by Indian business publication Inventiva. Gemini says it invested about $132 million between 2014 and 2019, including later capital injections, and alleges that about $101 million was lost.

The central allegation is that the Sawiris side was misled about who controlled Voltaire, a venture whose main business was presented as currency trading. The claimants allege that New Zealand businessman Eric Watson held undisclosed ownership and control of the business, that Voltaire traded with counterparties linked to people connected to Voltaire on uneconomic terms, and that further funding was obtained using forecasts the claimants say had "no basis in reality." They also allege that Voltaire made payments that benefited the defendants and their associates.

The causes of action include fraudulent misrepresentation, breach of fiduciary duty, conspiracy and accessory liability. None of the allegations has been tested at trial.

The defendants

Watson, the first-named defendant, lost a separate London lawsuit brought by New Zealand entrepreneur Owen Glenn in 2018, according to New Zealand business publication BusinessDesk. His son, Sam Watson, whom BusinessDesk described as chief executive of Australian-listed Bioxyne, is also a defendant, along with William Gibson and Tim Connell, the publication reported.

In April 2026, Mr. Justice Bryan of the Commercial Court refused an application by Gibson, the seventh defendant, to add counterclaims to the case, according to reports of that ruling. The decision was procedural and made no finding on the fraud allegations.

The claimants discontinued their case against Krishan Rattan, a founder of Voltaire who was named as the second defendant, under a consent order recorded in August 2026, according to Inventiva. The terms of any settlement were not made public, and Rattan's current firm, Terra-Invest, has said the proceedings against him are at an end.

Billionaires.Africa could not find a public response from Eric Watson or the other remaining defendants to the claims being heard at trial. The defendants' arguments in court were not available in public reports at the time of writing.

Who is Naguib Sawiris

Sawiris, 72, is the eldest son of Onsi Sawiris, who founded the Orascom group, and is worth about $5.6 billion, according to Forbes' real-time billionaires list on Oct. 13. That puts him seventh on the magazine's 2026 ranking of Africa's richest people.

He built his fortune in telecommunications. He sold Orascom Telecom to Russia's VimpelCom, now Veon, in 2011 in a multibillion-dollar deal, and now chairs Orascom TMT Investments, which holds stakes in an Egyptian asset manager and Italian internet company Italiaonline, Forbes says. He also developed the Silversands resort in Grenada and helped found the Free Egyptians party during Egypt's 2011 uprising.

His younger brothers, Nassef and Samih, are also billionaires. Nassef Sawiris, the richest of the three, co-owns English Premier League club Aston Villa. The Voltaire case concerns a vehicle linked to Naguib's branch of the family, which Law360 identified as the claimant.

The family has been in London's courts before. In Benedetti v. Sawiris, decided by the UK Supreme Court in 2013, an Italian adviser unsuccessfully sought a larger fee from Naguib Sawiris over the 2005 acquisition of Italian telecom group Wind.