The suit was filed on Jan. 24 in federal court in Washington, D.C..
In it, Lord and Nada claim that starting in late 2017, the UAE and some of its officials bankrolled a 'dark' public relations campaign to destroy Nada's personal reputation and to crush Lord Energy, a trading firm.
The suit claims the UAE and ADNOC saw Lord Energy as a growing competitor to ADNOC in Asian markets.
ADNOC declined to comment.
Nada alleges that UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan "oversaw" the campaign through UAE officials and a front company that hired and paid millions to Geneva-based private investigation firm Alp Services SA to orchestrate the scheme.
The UAE foreign ministry and the government's media office did not reply to emailed requests for comment. Alp Services did not reply to an email seeking comment.
In the filing, Nada said he discovered the scheme after acquiring more than 8,000 documents hacked from Alp's servers from Swiss authorities, having refused to pay the anonymous hackers when they contacted him in 2021. It was not clear when he acquired the documents.
Alp spread a "false narrative" through the media, as well as by directly contacting banks and other organisations, with allegations that Lugano, Switzerland-based Lord Energy and its U.S. subsidiary were used as "fronts to finance the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda", the suit said.
The campaign, codenamed "Project Arnica" by Alp, was successful as international banks and Lord Energy's key trading partners, including oil majors and Algeria's state oil firm Sonatrach, cut ties with Nada in 2018, and his company declared bankruptcy in April 2019, according to the filing.
Nada, born in the United States, said he was never associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement founded over 90 years ago in Egypt, although his father had historic ties to the group.
The suit accuses the defendants of racketeering and breaking U.S. laws on five counts, including wire fraud, bank fraud and breaking antitrust laws.
Nada is claiming three times the actual damages, lost profits and disgorgement of defendants' profits that amount to $923 million, taking the total to $2.8 billion.
